Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #345: Trent Baltzell-Univ of Rhode Island | From Athlete to Head Coach of His Alma Mater

Transcript

#345: Trent Baltzell-Univ of Rhode Island | From Athlete to Head Coach of His Alma Mater · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
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  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
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  in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
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  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
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  All right, you're back here on the Gil Athletics Connection
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  podcast. Man, I am super, super pumped.
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  It's Season 7. I cannot believe we started this
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  back in right before COVID. We started this in January of
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  2020 as a way to uplift and honor coaches around the
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  country. And certainly I had a vision,
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  but I could not envision what it has become.
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  I'm so grateful for the men and women who listened to this
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  podcast, numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
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  I'm, I'm just so, so, so blessed.
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  And really it's not about me. It's not about Gil.
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  It's honestly about the men and women that we have on the show
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  here, the men and women who choose to be track and field
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  coaches. And I'm pumped to bring you this
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  one. There's a lot of great things
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  going on. Maybe a place you maybe not be
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  aware of it. It's one of the smaller.
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  It is the small estate, actually, but there's a lot of
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  big things going on for track and track and field.
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  So let's get into it. Help me welcome the men's head
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  coach there at University of Rhode Island.
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  The Rams, baby. I got to find out if there's
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  actually Rams in Rhode Island. Well, that'll be the first
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  question I asked him. Help me welcome the wise, the
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  wonderful Mr. Trent Balzel. Trent, how are you doing, my
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  friend? Doing well.
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  Thanks for having me, Mike. How did I nail that last name?
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  That was great. I was really like, it's a good
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  name when you, when you really get it, Balzel, like it's I like
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  that. It's kind of a show business
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  name, man, I like that. Yeah, it's, it's not a name
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  that's easy to pair with first names, though.
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  So we've had my wife and I have had four sons and it's it's been
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  a bit of a struggle. Do do you mind?
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  I, I you get to you, you're the rule maker here.
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  So if you don't want to talk about your kids and family,
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  that's all good with me. But since you said that, I'm
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  curious what their names are. Are you you comfortable sharing
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  that with us? Oh.
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  Boy. You could say no and I'll move
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  on bro. A lot, a lot a lot stranger than
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  my my name. I like, I like unique names.
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  You said strange unique names. There's enough Mikes and Dave's
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  and Steve's in this world, brother.
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  So I like the Trent's fairly unique.
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  I don't know many Trent's. So you got some unique names
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  there, huh? Yeah, we do.
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  Our first son is his name is Atlas.
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  He's almost he's coming up on 7 years old, which.
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  Atlas. Yeah, that how that's a cool
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  name. My wife is kind of into like
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  Greek mythology and just mythology.
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  Yeah. It's, it's, so it's we kind of
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  started down that route and then we just, we kept hold with it.
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  Tell me one of your kids name is like Hercules.
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  No, we, we thought, yeah, we thought of more like Gods,
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  Titans, but yeah, we, we, we, we ended up going with Zephyr for
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  our second son. And then we had twins, Cosmo and
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  Solaris. So more of like the interstellar
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  stuff? You got a son named Cosmo?
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  Yeah, bro, that's so cool, man. I, I, from the bottom of my
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  heart, I really do like that. Like I said, there's an, I was
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  in a meeting yesterday with four or five of my team and I, I kind
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  of funny as I, I don't know why I thought about it.
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  I looked around. I was like, I had a Tim, an
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  Adam, a Nick, Dave and a Mike. And I was like, we are 90% of
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  all the names in this country, at least not the world, but this
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  country. How boring are we?
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  So when I see a trend, Cosmo Zephyr, bro.
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  Yeah, the Ames dude. I I, I think that I'm the only
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  Trent Balt cell in the whole world.
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  There are other Balt cells. You know there's a website for
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  that, right? Yeah, I yeah, I've looked it up.
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  It's probably 10 years ago, the last time for this.
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  But I I have to guess that none of my four sons have matching
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  names. Oh yeah, no, no, they're they're
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  one of ones. Absolutely.
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  Yeah. Except the twins.
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  They're one of two, Yeah. Well, that's super cool.
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  I love that you and your wife did that.
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  Honestly, you could have been Mike, Adam, Dave, Tim and been
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  like everybody else. I think that's cool, man.
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  Well she was in our major so she is mine.
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  Goes in different directions. Got it, Got it, Got it.
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  Yeah, Yeah. We need those people, even
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  though, you know, they're, they're on the fringe.
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  But we, we need those, those people.
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  That's cool. I love that.
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  Well, I said my first question was going to be, are there Rams
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  in the state of Rhode Island? Why are you the Rams?
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  Do you know about that? I, I don't know too much about
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  the history, but yeah, there are, I mean, a lot of, a lot of
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  schools are called the Rams all across the country.
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  We have like a just down the road, like a 5 square mile at
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  which takes up a, a big portion of the state, as you can
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  imagine. It's, it's called the the the
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  preserve. And they've got like a golf
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  course out there and it's like a big hunting place in in southern
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  Rhode Island. And they have like this, this
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  pen of Rams like right out front.
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  And you can stop and see them and feed them and stuff like
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  that. But those are the only actual
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  Rams I've ever seen in the state.
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  I like when you said 5 square miles.
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  Literally my head was like wait is that like the whole state?
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  Like what do you mean? It's, I actually live like on,
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  on the outskirts of, of their, of their property.
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  And the other day actually I was walking down the road with my
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  boys and there was just, there was just a quail in the middle
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  of the road, just like a dead quail.
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  And I was like, oh, interesting. So they, that's it's a hunting
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  place. It's like a hunting preserve.
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  You know. Rich guys from New York will
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  come down and, and you know, buy their $2,000,000 condos and just
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  hang out for a weekend every once in a while.
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  That's crazy. That's amazing.
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  What a life. I guess you'd mentioned before
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  we hit record you're a golfer, so that must be the golf course.
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  Yeah, I will. I will never play on those golf
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  courses. That's where it's.
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  Oh yeah, they uppity courses. Yeah, we have a good mix in our
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  area. We got, we got some good public
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  courses that real close to home for me.
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  So at some point my boys and I will probably get a family
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  membership, but it's going to be a few years.
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  They're all still really young. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Got it. Love it, love it.
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  Well, man, let's learn more about you.
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  That's fascinating. Dude.
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  I, I do, I I will be thinking about your kids names because I
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  I it's a weird quirk of mine that I love unique.
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  We we just had a new guy I in our customer service team and
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  his name is Dio and I think it's Deo and I'm just like fascinated
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  with that dude. I'm like Dio, like who the hell
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  names their kid Dio? I love that.
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  That's so cool man. Yeah, yeah.
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  And. He's not American, so he didn't
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  name it after like, what was it, Ronnie James Dio or whatever?
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  He's from the Congo originally. So I'm like, it's obviously a
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  more of a Congolese type name, but I'm just fascinated with
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  this dude. Like, I just want to learn more.
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  Just because your name's Dio and not Nick.
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  Yeah, maybe your background is, is, is, is as interesting as
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  your name is, right? Right, I'm going to find out
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  like his pants were accountants or like something.
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  Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, Trent, let's hop in
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  our way back machine and learn more about you, my friend.
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  Assuming, and actually I do know this, this isn't an assumption,
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  but assuming that you were a track and field athlete, where
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  in the world does track start for you?
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  Back in fifth grade. So that was, yeah, my parents,
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  you know, my mom was from the Midwest.
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  They didn't do much for sports for women at the time.
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  So she was, she was doing cheerleading and field hockey.
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  That's about it. But I think she's pretty
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  athletic. Like she could have, she could
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  have done a lot. My dad grew up playing like
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  tennis and golf and in the Midwest and in Texas and
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  different places. So they, they met up here and
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  got us into sports when we were young.
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  My sister is a couple years older than I am and my brother's
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  a couple years younger than I am.
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  So we all played soccer, we all played, you know, basketball and
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  baseball and things like that. And then my sister, my older
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  sister who is 2 years older than me, she got cut from like the
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  6th grade soccer team. So she started just running
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  cross country and she was really good, like right off the bat,
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  like really good as a as a kid. And so Fast forward a couple
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  years, at least one year, she's in 7th grade.
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  I'm getting out of elementary school that fall in fifth grade.
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  And I just walk over to the cross country practice because
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  that's where she's hanging out. And I went to Sutton High School
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  in Massachusetts, tiny school, the middle school, the
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  elementary school, the high school are all like literally in
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  the same place. Oh, wow.
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  So I just happened to be around, you know, watching her races the
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  year before. And then I would go and just run
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  around with like the older kids as I thought of them at the
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  time. And, and so, yeah, my, you know,
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  I, I first got into like racing as a fifth grader.
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  Like they just let me take part, you know, in, in the races and
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  the practices. So that was my introduction.
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  Was it? So you come from kind of a
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  varied background, either soccer from your sister, your dad
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  played some different sports, things like that.
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  When you started, you know, kind of catching the wind of this
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  cross country track and field thing.
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  Was it was it an immediate like when you think about fifth
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  grade, 6th grade, was it an immediate like, Oh, because you
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  know, spoiler alert, this becomes your life.
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  You're, you're a track coach now, right?
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  But was it something that was an immediate like, you know, they
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  say love at first sight, like, Oh my God, where has this sport
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  been my whole life? Or very rightfully so you're
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  freaking 5th grade. 6th grade was like, oh, that's cool, this
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  is fun. But you know, I still want to
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  try it for the baseball team or soccer team or whatever.
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  Probably somewhere in the middle.
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  I would say I and that might have been when I first found out
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  that I was kind of a glutton for pain.
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  So I would go out on runs and and then do workouts and
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  especially the races, like they hurt a lot.
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  I don't know if you've ever run cross country before or distance
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  races, but yeah, they can get pretty painful.
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  And I don't know what about it drew me in, but like, I just
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  felt good after, you know, after doing like a hard effort, even
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  as like a young kid like that. So, but I still at the same time
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  was, was thinking, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to play
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  soccer. Like when I actually get into
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  middle school and I can be on the team, I'm going to play
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  soccer. I'm going to, you know, play
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  basketball in the winter time. I'm going to play baseball in
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  the in the in the spring time. And that's going to be like my
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  career. Rightfully so, by the way.
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  Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
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  And, and, and if there was 1 sport that I was going to give
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  up, it was soccer because I had just been playing it like at at
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  higher levels for so long. I was kind of getting, getting a
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  little bored of it. So you may even my thought was,
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  hey, I'll run cross country and then you know, I'll use that for
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  fitness for the other sports just like so many other.
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  People, that's what I say, you know, I've done this 300 times.
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  That is, there are certainly uniquenesses through all 300
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  different coaches I've had. That is a more of a common theme
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  of like, Oh yeah, I started running cross country to stay in
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  shape for basketball or soccer or whatever.
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  Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
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  I appreciate you talking about, you know, did I run cross
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  country in the pain? So I was such a terrible
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  athlete, not only talent wise, but like whenever it did start
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  to hurt Trent, I would just start walking.
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  So it's hard for me to say cross country has paid.
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  Wouldn't you do it right? Possibly, but I didn't do it
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  right at all. So you get into high school,
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  what sport and or sports did you end up doing?
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  Yeah, I mean it, It was like in middle school when I decided,
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  OK, officially I'm going to run cross country.
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  And then I just started. I think at the time I was still
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  playing like basketball. So I played basketball in 7th
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  and 8th grade for like the the, you know, the JV team, our
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  school was so literally so small that they needed middle school
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  players to to field like JV and varsity teams.
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  So I was like earning letters. I don't know if that's still a
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  thing anymore, but I was earning letters in those sports in
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  middle in middle school. Yeah, because.
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  That was a big thing when I was in high school.
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  I would that it feels like that still has to be a thing.
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  I am not honestly, I'm not sure because even our level in
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  college like we, I, I received letters back in 2014 when I was
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  graduating like, but they don't they don't do that anymore at
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  Uri that's. Interesting.
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  So it's interesting how culture changes because I remember that
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  being a like, that's how I got in the track.
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  It was like, oh, I won't get into the whole story, but it was
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  like indoor track for us in in Alabama.
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  And I was like, oh, that's got to be easy.
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  I'll get a letter. Like I remember that being a
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  very specific thing. Like I will get my first letter.
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  So that's interesting, right? Yeah.
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  Small school. I get that.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're playing all the sports
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  because they need you for every sport.
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  Was it so small? Did you, did you have a football
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  team? We we did not we anyone wanted
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  to play football. Could could play at the
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  neighboring town. So you are small.
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  Yeah, 90% their town and only like a few from our town so.
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  How many kids did you graduate with?
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  95 It wasn't like the tiniest, but it was that's not a pretty
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  small. Yeah, Yeah.
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  So I was 125 and we were one of the largest schools in the
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  state. You know, we were, there were 6A
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  where I was back then we were 5A.
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  So that's not, I've certainly met people who were graduating
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  with class of 10. So that that's not terribly
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  tiny. Yeah, true.
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  But it's small. It's small.
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  Yeah, yeah. So by the time I was a, a
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  freshman, like my, my plan was to, to play basketball in the
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  winter time. And then I go to like 3 days of
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  the tryouts and, and I was like, and they were expecting me to
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  play because I, I've been playing with these, with these,
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  with this group of guys. I'm still friends with this
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  whole group from, from, you know, the, the guys I grew up
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  with. And so they're all trying to
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  convince me to stick around. But I'm like, you know what, I,
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  I just want to go and do track, you know, and that I had already
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  been, it wasn't just distance running.
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  Like I already been doing a lot of the field events like high
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  jump and, and the throws and things.
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  And so I was just after cross country season, like I just
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  needed more of it at the time. And I just like, you know what,
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  maybe maybe I'll come back next year for basketball, but like I
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  need to do this now. I just never went back.
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  Did you? So it sounds like you started
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  throwing yourself in the trek and field.
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  Did you throw yourself in the trek and field off the trek?
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  And what I mean by that is, were you trying to find track and
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  film news wherever you went to a store or the magazine rack or
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  DGA watches anytime track was on TV where you glued to it, or was
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  it strictly just the physical side of it?
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  I would say mostly physical side.
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  I don't, I don't think we, we just didn't have as much, you
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  know, from ATV perspective, like I guess if it was, you know, the
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  Olympic trials or the Olympics or something like of course,
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  like I would, I would try to watch, but you know, there was
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  no social media and you just couldn't, you couldn't get as
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  much of it like outside of like your, your situation.
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  So what year did you graduate high school?
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  I graduated in O9. OK, All right.
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  Well, you're so young, O9. Geez, I interviewed someone the
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  other day, they graduated No 6 and I was like or no, No 16 and
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  I was like, bro, I was 10 years in my Gill career when you
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  graduated high school. Like that's just crazy. 09, I'm
• 14:30
  three years in. You guys keep getting younger.
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  I keep getting older. That's the the the the issue.
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  We'll we'll try to keep you young.
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  Yeah, I need it as I need as much help as possible, that's
• 14:41
  for sure. OK, So what did you did you you
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  started with a distance background, but you started
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  playing with some other field events.
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  Did you become more of a distance guy or you kind of a
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  cross country guy throughout the high school career?
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  Maybe one of my biggest regrets as an athlete was sticking with
• 14:59
  cross country for so long. So I went fifth grade to my my
• 15:03
  very first race ever was 911. Was was that that actual day?
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  Oh, shut up. Yeah, so I mean, it was big news
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  by the time school got out. I don't think anyone really had
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  talked about it too much during school, but by the time school
• 15:18
  got out, you. Didn't win that meet, did you?
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  I was 1/5 grader racing 8th grader so was but I but that was
• 15:25
  like the first time I went like super super deep like ever and I
• 15:30
  will never forget the feeling. I don't know if I've ever gone
• 15:32
  as deep as I did that day, to be honest.
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  What I was thinking is like, 'cause you know, this happened.
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  Like the person who won that race, like, you know, there's
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  their first race. What a big deal.
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  And it got completely thrown to the side because of 911.
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  You know, they're like, like, yeah, I should have been a hero
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  that day. And this unbelievable travesty,
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  you know, like, no one remembers.
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  I could just, you know. Right.
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  That's sucks bro. You know, people's birthdays are
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  that day and it's like, well, I really can't celebrate.
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  Yeah, yeah. But it's an easy way for me to
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  remember like when. I'm sure I.
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  First got into track like the in my indication.
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  Yeah, 100%. What a what a crazy marker for
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  that day. Yeah, absolutely.
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  So so you you regretted running cross country for so long is
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  what you said. Yeah, so by the time I was a
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  senior, I was, I was probably, I think I had grown to be about 6
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  foot 5 by then, which is what I my current height is.
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  So I was 65 and five. Yeah.
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  And I'm like 180 lbs. So I mean, I, I love running
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  distance. I still love it.
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  Like I still don't like I'll go out for for an hour potentially
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  sometimes. And, and I weigh 220 lbs now.
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  But even at the time at 180, I was just so much bigger than
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  everybody else. And it's, it's just hard to, you
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  know, the more I've gotten into to training and, and the
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  Physiology of all these things, it's like you're at such a
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  disadvantage when, when you're, you know, when you're that big
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  relative to your competitors. So I was, you know, I was
• 16:57
  important to our team. We were a small school and we
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  had the ability to win some meets, some like local
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  championships, like league and district stuff.
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  And so, you know, I was one of our better runners and had I not
• 17:11
  been, you know, on the team and, and hanging in there, like we
• 17:14
  wouldn't have been able to have as much success.
• 17:16
  So, and I loved it. So like there was, there was
• 17:18
  really no reason at at the time that I felt for me not to do it,
• 17:22
  you know? Now, this is extremely
• 17:25
  stereotypical for tall people here, but I mean, how did you
• 17:29
  not play basketball? I'm thinking 65 small school, a
• 17:36
  big school 65 guy is, you know, probably higher propensity to be
• 17:40
  on the basketball team than not. I mean, that had to be like, I
• 17:44
  mean, the basketball coach had to be like, what the fuck?
• 17:46
  Like you had to be one of the taller kids.
• 17:48
  Yeah, no, for sure. I, I mean, I was probably the
• 17:52
  only guy on our, in our school, maybe maybe one of two or three
• 17:56
  who could like dunk a basketball.
• 17:57
  You know. And so, yeah, they were, they
• 18:00
  were real upset because I, I've been playing basketball since I
• 18:03
  was, you know, 8 years old or something like that.
• 18:05
  And I'd come up with all these guys and, and I even continued
• 18:08
  playing AAU like after, you know, during the summertime.
• 18:11
  So, dude. And then it would come and it
• 18:14
  would be like November and it would be basketball tryouts.
• 18:16
  And, you know, I would do a couple days and I'd be like, you
• 18:19
  know what? I'm just not feeling this.
• 18:20
  I'm going back to track. That's that's interesting
• 18:24
  because you know, like I'm, I'm putting my my myself in the
• 18:28
  shoes of like a teammate or a potential teammate and I'm like,
• 18:30
  dude, you play in the summer. WTF.
• 18:34
  We need you in December and January.
• 18:36
  But you know, like what in there?
• 18:38
  But I love this others. So put myself in your shoes of
• 18:41
  like you got to be true to who you are.
• 18:43
  And you know, when December and January and February are here, I
• 18:45
  like track. I wish maybe if basketball
• 18:48
  season, high school basketball season was in the summer, that
• 18:51
  might have worked out. But man, you stay true to
• 18:54
  yourself. I really, there's something to
• 18:56
  be said about that. Yeah.
• 18:57
  And on top of that, I was. So I was in like the concert
• 19:01
  band at our school. I played the trumpet and we also
• 19:05
  did some other stuff we had like jazz band and we had pep band.
• 19:08
  And so when I was younger, especially my freshman year,
• 19:11
  like when I had decided, you know, to to forgo basketball and
• 19:14
  continue with track and running, you know, I played in the pep
• 19:19
  band. So I would be at the basketball
• 19:20
  games and they would see me out there and, and I was first
• 19:24
  eventually end up becoming first chair trumpet.
• 19:26
  And so I was literally in the pep band and the, the band
• 19:29
  director was pissed at me too because he's like, dude, you
• 19:31
  should be playing basketball. Like why are you on this side of
• 19:34
  the of this, of the sideline? So yeah, they saw me every game.
• 19:39
  You know, opposing teams had to go there and be like, wait a
• 19:42
  minute, the dudes in the band are 65.
• 19:44
  How big are the guys in? The Yeah, now the team was still
• 19:48
  good. They still, you know, they're
• 19:49
  still able to be successful without me, but yeah.
• 19:53
  So did you so on the you're talking about cross country on
• 19:56
  the track, Were you a miler, 2 miler or what?
• 19:59
  What did you? And I, I mixed it up like I, I
• 20:03
  would, I would actually run the two mile and then 20 minutes
• 20:06
  later have to go in high jump like wow.
• 20:08
  Yeah, Mike, you're. One of those that's a rare,
• 20:10
  that's a rare bird there. I mean, you're 6/5 though, so
• 20:12
  it's kind of like that was the next stereotypical high tall guy
• 20:16
  thing is like, Oh, well, you must have high jump, which is so
• 20:17
  again, very ludicrous because it's not like all high jumpers
• 20:20
  are 65 necessarily. There's plenty of, you know, 661
• 20:22
  that are 7 footer, you know, the jump 7 foot plus.
• 20:25
  So so it's not really the the same stereotype, but it it just
• 20:29
  all tall people automatically you high jump, you know, with
• 20:32
  that. So you're doing kind of all over
• 20:34
  the place. I was all over the place.
• 20:37
  Yeah, I I had even done my first decathlon as a 7th grader.
• 20:41
  Really. How so?
• 20:43
  So again, we just you kind of get to the end of the season.
• 20:48
  Well, this isn't this is maybe Massachusetts alone.
• 20:51
  I think Vermont does one too. A couple other states up here
• 20:53
  where at the end of the year they just bring everyone
• 20:56
  together. Whoever wants to do it.
• 20:58
  It's like an after the state meet.
• 20:59
  It's like a Tuesday, Wednesday, decathlon.
• 21:02
  And I think the heptathlon might have been like the Thursday,
• 21:04
  Friday or something. And so anyone on, you know, in
• 21:08
  Central Massachusetts who wanted to do that would come together
• 21:10
  on one day and do it. And there would be like 150
• 21:13
  kids. Often times middle schoolers
• 21:15
  were were taking part so. Yeah, I did last year.
• 21:20
  This is the well, 2020 or when you're listening to this, it's
• 21:23
  2026. When I'm recording this as 2025.
• 21:26
  And I think it was way, you know, after seven years you
• 21:29
  start forgetting some things. It was either earlier in 2025 or
• 21:32
  early in 2024. I think it was 2024.
• 21:34
  Anyway, I interviewed a high school coach from every state,
• 21:38
  so all 50 + 1 plus DC about their outdoor state meet.
• 21:41
  How do you qualify, what events and things like that.
• 21:43
  It was fascinating. I'd highly encourage you if
• 21:45
  you're listening or even you Trent it.
• 21:47
  It really was fascinating to to go into all 50 states.
• 21:50
  What fascinated me was how many states do a multi typically
• 21:55
  after the state meet. There are a couple of if I
• 21:57
  remember correctly there was at least one Pennsylvania maybe
• 22:01
  that has a heptathlon. I'm sorry, what?
• 22:03
  What would be the five? Pentathlon.
• 22:06
  Pentathlon for their outdoor state meet for boys and girls.
• 22:10
  But there was a state and you're describing the state, I'm sure.
• 22:13
  I think it was Vermont. They do.
• 22:15
  In fact, they they claim to be the oldest high school decathlon
• 22:19
  in the country. They got upwards OF100150200
• 22:23
  kids. I remember this.
• 22:24
  And what was interesting is first of all that that many kids
• 22:27
  would do a decathlon after. But what's super interesting to
• 22:30
  me is both boys and girls do the decathlon.
• 22:35
  They didn't do a decathlon, boys have.
• 22:37
  And I was like, wait a minute, you got this.
• 22:39
  Sorry, not sorry, small state up in the Northeast and 100 girls
• 22:44
  go and do the decathlon, but we can't get the decathlon for
• 22:48
  World Athletics and NCAA. Like there's a lot of excuses
• 22:51
  that just aren't flying anymore if these guys up here could
• 22:54
  figure it out. So that's cool.
• 22:55
  You were part of that. That's really neat.
• 22:57
  Yeah, yeah. And you're spot on with Vermont.
• 23:00
  They definitely have the the girls doing the decathlon.
• 23:03
  I think it's almost like an open thing to up there.
• 23:05
  So like you don't even necessarily have to be a high
• 23:07
  school or a middle schooler. You can correct.
• 23:10
  Yeah. Because who was it?
• 23:12
  I'm getting some states mixed up.
• 23:14
  There was somebody, maybe it was up there that did a, a multi or
• 23:20
  a state meet for people who didn't even do track because it
• 23:23
  was like, oh, there's baseball players that would love to do
• 23:25
  track, but it's baseball season. So after the track season, we
• 23:28
  invite everybody like there's no, you know, hey, in the 100
• 23:31
  minimum mark is 1130 or what? Like it was like, man, you
• 23:34
  played baseball. Cool, come run the 100, come do
• 23:35
  the decathlon or whatever. I just think those
• 23:38
  opportunities, especially in high school are so important
• 23:41
  because you still don't know even as a senior, you're 18
• 23:44
  years old, but you're still years away from like who you
• 23:47
  are, like physically and mentally and socially.
• 23:50
  So I, I'd love it really when I did that, that 50 state thing,
• 23:54
  man, I just some states are really giving kids multiple
• 23:58
  chances to be good at something and experience things, whether
• 24:01
  it's javelin, multis, etcetera. And I remember just being super
• 24:05
  impressed up in the Northeast because there was, it seemed
• 24:07
  like the culture of multis was more frequent up in the
• 24:11
  Northeast than the rest of our there were some other great
• 24:13
  pockets album in my state, Alabama, We'd have done a
• 24:16
  unofficial state meet for decathlon, have Teflon after the
• 24:19
  state meet, after the outdoor state meet.
• 24:21
  For decades. Bo Jackson was a a state
• 24:23
  champion decathlete. So we've been doing it forever.
• 24:26
  But it seemed like a higher percentage of states up in the
• 24:30
  Northeast. And that that was pretty cool.
• 24:32
  Man, I love that. I'd love that you had that
• 24:34
  opportunity. Yeah, I think probably
• 24:36
  especially for Vermont, like the kids literally have to do all
• 24:39
  these events because otherwise they couldn't even have like a
• 24:42
  track meet. Like there's just there's so
• 24:43
  many less, less people around. So that like special is vacation
• 24:47
  doesn't happen as much. I mean, we have guys on our
• 24:50
  team. It's Vermont is my sister lives
• 24:52
  in Vermont and I live in southern Rhode Island.
• 24:54
  And it's she's like 2 1/2 hours away.
• 24:56
  It's not that far. So we have guys on the team from
• 25:00
  from Vermont. And that's pretty typical for
• 25:01
  us. But you, you said earlier that
• 25:04
  the, you know, there are state pentathlons like scored, you
• 25:08
  know, at the state meet. So Massachusetts has that now.
• 25:13
  They didn't when I was in high school, but they have that now.
• 25:14
  And New York has had that for a while too.
• 25:16
  I don't know about Pennsylvania, but definitely those states.
• 25:18
  It might have been Massachusetts that I was thinking again two
• 25:22
  years ago in 50 different states.
• 25:23
  But but the, the reason I remember it was whichever state
• 25:27
  it was, whether it's Pennsylvania or Massachusetts,
• 25:29
  they have a like, like all states have a, a, a limit on the
• 25:33
  number of events that you can do as an athlete.
• 25:35
  And this state was, I'm sure I'm going to muck this up a lot
• 25:40
  here. It was like 3 running events and
• 25:42
  it was actually 4 events or something like that.
• 25:44
  So it was like 3. It couldn't be more than it
• 25:49
  couldn't be all four and running or all four in a field that had
• 25:51
  to be 3 and one or two and two or something like that, right.
• 25:54
  But and they're real strict on it, which it's a rule.
• 25:57
  So it's I don't know. I should have said it's real
• 25:59
  strict. It's a rule.
• 26:00
  But the pentathlon counted as one event.
• 26:03
  So you could. So the person I was recruiting
• 26:05
  or I'm sorry, interviewing was talking about he had a girl who
• 26:09
  did 3 air quotes here, normal events, single events, but then
• 26:14
  also but did the pentathlon. So she actually did, you know,
• 26:17
  nine different races or events like that, but she could not
• 26:22
  have done 1/5 like she was really good in the high jump or
• 26:24
  something like that. She could not have just entered
• 26:26
  the high jump because that would have been her 5th.
• 26:27
  And that wasn't, you know, that was illegal and was like, but
• 26:29
  you can do the pentathlon and do 5.
• 26:31
  Like just, you know, common sense wise, it seems like it
• 26:33
  doesn't match up. But yeah, yeah, it also kind of
• 26:36
  does, I guess, you know? Yeah, yeah, they, well, they,
• 26:39
  they do the pentathlon and maybe like the pole vault competition
• 26:43
  on like a Thursday and then the rest of the meet is on a
• 26:45
  Saturday. That's right.
• 26:46
  Yep. I I that must have been
• 26:48
  Massachusetts then, because yeah, you, you, you sounds like
• 26:51
  bro. Well, I bet that was the state
• 26:52
  I'm thinking about. Yeah, I'm just asking.
• 26:54
  I love, I love giving kids opportunities and you know, for
• 26:58
  American track and field overall, we certainly have had
• 27:02
  some successes and are having successes now we're behind in
• 27:04
  the javelin, the hammer and the multis.
• 27:07
  Again, we've certainly had our successes in those events.
• 27:11
  But I just think about like, dude, if we had, you know,
• 27:14
  there's a a million kids that get to do the 100 and 204 by 1.
• 27:17
  If we had a million kids that got to do the javelin or the
• 27:19
  hammer, like we'd be way better. Like just throw the numbers at
• 27:23
  us. That's why Texas is so good
• 27:24
  beyond good weather and track coaches.
• 27:27
  But they have a billion people. So just from the numbers, they,
• 27:30
  you know, they're going to rule a Rhode Island on a, on a dual
• 27:34
  meet, right? Because they just have so many
• 27:35
  more kids running at it. We did that for our javelins,
• 27:37
  multis and and hammer and steeples.
• 27:40
  That's why I love New York, having that steeple chase.
• 27:42
  That's cool. Now we're we're pretty lucky to
• 27:46
  have like the hammer throw in Rhode Island it because it's
• 27:50
  it's one of few. I think it might be like 10
• 27:52
  states now that do it, but Nope. Nope, I remember this as well.
• 27:56
  Good point, thank you for reminding me.
• 27:58
  Rhode Island is the Hammer state.
• 27:59
  So there are a couple of states that have it unofficially.
• 28:03
  Ohio used to and then Ohio. Oh, it's 08.
• 28:06
  Whatever it is. Bandit, they said no, you can't
• 28:09
  do that guys, even unofficially, we can't do it.
• 28:11
  Washington has a really good culture.
• 28:13
  So they have kind of unofficial state meet.
• 28:15
  California has a good culture, so they have a unofficial
• 28:17
  California State meet. But as far as actually state
• 28:21
  meet, like sanction, you're it buddy.
• 28:23
  Rhode Island, it's only one. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:26
  And it's, I mean, we, we've had some unbelievable hammer
• 28:29
  throwers out of this even currently right now, like some
• 28:33
  of these high school kids have, you know, near national record
• 28:36
  levels and go on to become Division One All Americans and
• 28:40
  national champions and. Until some of these other guys
• 28:44
  like a Mike Judge and Joe Frontier and what's my guy at
• 28:48
  Notre Dame High School out in California.
• 28:50
  Until some of these guys started teaching high schoolers more
• 28:53
  about the hammer. Rhode Island, probably not.
• 28:56
  County international students, probably I said 70 plus percent
• 29:00
  of all college hammer throwers coming out of high school.
• 29:03
  You know, freshmen. I mean, it was everybody like
• 29:04
  you want a hammer thrower, better go to what was it like
• 29:08
  Warwick High School? I remember that being a big 1A.
• 29:12
  Big one right now, yeah. Yeah.
• 29:14
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:16
  So you had this like, you know the state this big, but it was
• 29:18
  this big for Hammer. Yeah, that's so good.
• 29:21
  Anyway, I love that. I just I'm so glad I did the IT
• 29:25
  was a lot of work, but to do the 50 states, it was absolutely
• 29:29
  fascinating. So anytime I get to bring up
• 29:30
  that subject, man, it just it's a warm feeling.
• 29:33
  I really, I really love that. So I appreciate you letting me
• 29:36
  interrupt your story to talk more about that.
• 29:38
  OK, so you're a guy who is running the two mile. 20 minutes
• 29:43
  later you're trying to figure out how do you get your two mile
• 29:45
  legs to go with a high jump bar? That makes me feel like like,
• 29:50
  you know, they say if you're going to be a basketball player,
• 29:52
  you got to be a gym rat. You got to always be in the gym
• 29:55
  shooting, things like that, right?
• 29:57
  To be a a multi athlete. And I don't know if you actually
• 30:00
  go to the decathlon, we'll find that out here, but you're multi
• 30:02
  event athlete, you're doing 2 Mile High jump, etcetera.
• 30:06
  It seems like you got to be a a gym rat there.
• 30:08
  So you got to always be at the track, always talking to coach,
• 30:10
  things like that. What was your relationship with
• 30:13
  coach or coaches in high school? Yeah, my coach would.
• 30:16
  His name is Bill Gillen. He's recently retired as a high
• 30:19
  school coach and social worker. So like, even the elementary
• 30:23
  school kids knew him like for, for people that were working
• 30:26
  with him as you know, as his profession, but you know, as a,
• 30:30
  as a coach, he was a distance guy.
• 30:32
  Like he he was the up until this past year, he held the UMass
• 30:37
  Amherst Steeplechase record. Wow.
• 30:40
  It was finally broken in 2025. And so he was an all American.
• 30:46
  He used to run against pre and, and those guys like at at, you
• 30:49
  know, cross country championships.
• 30:50
  Big time, guy. OK.
• 30:52
  Yeah, no, he was, he was real good.
• 30:54
  He he was so modest. It was crazy.
• 30:57
  Like you could barely like you. You couldn't get him to talk
• 30:59
  about his his career. To be honest.
• 31:02
  He was just like the nicest man. But he was distance.
• 31:05
  He was distance minded and he he just kind of let the team do
• 31:11
  whatever they wanted outside of distance.
• 31:13
  You know, the captains ran the show.
• 31:15
  We really didn't have like assistant coaches that were, you
• 31:18
  know, that were there beyond just being babysitters.
• 31:21
  So, you know, the captains would and the older guys would, would
• 31:25
  teach the younger guys. So whether good or bad, they
• 31:28
  were taught this and that. So, yeah, I just came up and
• 31:33
  learned, learned from like the, you know, the high schoolers
• 31:35
  when I was in middle school. And then eventually that became
• 31:37
  my role, you know, as a as a junior senior, I would, you
• 31:41
  know, help out with the younger guys.
• 31:42
  And that's how we did it. You know that that's not
• 31:47
  uncommon. Luckily, it's not.
• 31:48
  I don't believe from talking to, you know, quote UN quote every
• 31:52
  coach in the country. I don't think it's the majority,
• 31:55
  but it's not uncommon that that experience that you're you had
• 31:59
  there. Did you?
• 32:01
  I mean, you said you graduated in O 9 so well, actually, you
• 32:05
  know, it's great. I just read this article about
• 32:07
  YouTube. I I don't think I really
• 32:09
  realized. I mean, I know YouTube went
• 32:11
  around forever, certainly went around when I was in high
• 32:12
  school, but like when I was just about to ask you, you know, in
• 32:15
  O9 like, Oh well, what were you doing?
• 32:17
  You know, O 6789 you're in this role of like a coach player
• 32:22
  type, if, if you will, is what I'm kind of hearing.
• 32:24
  Were you watching YouTube videos on how to coach high jump?
• 32:26
  But YouTube started in 2006. So you really didn't kind of
• 32:30
  have YouTube. It was the I've not even heard
• 32:33
  about YouTube. So what what were you doing?
• 32:36
  If anything? You're you're a 1718 year old
• 32:38
  kid. Lot of grace.
• 32:40
  Were you trying to go to the library to check out?
• 32:41
  But like what were you doing? Like you didn't have coach
• 32:44
  telling you what to do in the high jump or long jump or
• 32:46
  whatever. You kind of had to make it up or
• 32:49
  figure it out. How did you do that?
• 32:51
  Yeah, I mean, honestly, you're probably learning more from like
• 32:54
  the higher level athletes in the state.
• 32:56
  I would say like you'd go to invitationals and you'd just
• 32:59
  chat with other other kids and not so much from like a training
• 33:04
  perspective, but at least from like a technique perspective.
• 33:07
  Like you would just kind of pick things up.
• 33:09
  Yeah, you're right. YouTube wasn't around too much.
• 33:11
  I don't remember ever really looking into like, yeah, library
• 33:14
  or books and anything like that. It was, yeah.
• 33:19
  I was just more from like learn from sight and whatnot.
• 33:23
  I, I didn't think about that. You go to a meet and you see,
• 33:25
  you know, a, a 23 foot long jump and you're like, oh, did you see
• 33:27
  that? What was that drill he just did?
• 33:29
  All right, well, guess what we're doing on Monday?
• 33:30
  We're going to try to figure this thing out.
• 33:32
  No, that's, that's actually what was happening, Yeah.
• 33:34
  That makes sense. That makes sense.
• 33:36
  Are you at this time? So we're in senior year, Are
• 33:40
  you? Where is coaching, becoming a
• 33:42
  coach at all? Is it at all in your headspace
• 33:44
  or not at all? Maybe like indirectly, like I
• 33:51
  it, it wasn't like a conscious thought maybe, but I mean, I
• 33:55
  enjoyed, I enjoyed working with the other athletes, like on, on
• 33:58
  my team, you know, So and I was, I was also like keeping
• 34:03
  statistics at the time. So like I was kind of like doing
• 34:06
  some office work for for the coach.
• 34:10
  But yeah, I wouldn't say that like my plan was ever to become
• 34:14
  like a, you know, a full time coach or anything.
• 34:16
  You know, I'm thinking like, hey, I'm going to go become a
• 34:17
  track coach. I'm going to go like I'm
• 34:19
  purposely going to go study education so I can do this, or
• 34:22
  Geneseeology because I'm going to do this.
• 34:23
  Yeah. So what, what was it as you're
• 34:24
  looking at senior year and you're looking at schools and
• 34:26
  colleges and things like that, A so where'd you end up going?
• 34:29
  And B what did you, what were you thinking?
• 34:33
  Were you going to become A the firefighter, astronaut?
• 34:36
  Those are all the things I wanted to be when I was a kid.
• 34:37
  But what were you thinking as an 18 year old?
• 34:41
  And I not much outside of track. I was I was really absorbed Even
• 34:45
  so that would have been six years in competing like cross
• 34:49
  country, indoor and outdoor like consistently basically first for
• 34:53
  six to eight years I was like in love with track.
• 34:55
  So that was like, that was like my priority, like in the
• 34:58
  recruiting process, which I, I was, I was, I was, I guess I was
• 35:05
  a bit lazy with the whole thing. I knew I was going to do track
• 35:08
  somewhere like, and I just, and I, so I just kind of looked into
• 35:11
  a few programs that that caught my eye, mostly local programs.
• 35:15
  Like of course I was, you know, I had jumped 69 in the high
• 35:18
  jump. Well, maybe 6.
• 35:21
  I think I jumped 685 my junior year, so I kind of opened some
• 35:26
  doors for me so I could kind of look around a little bit.
• 35:29
  So I think I might have emailed some big schools.
• 35:31
  And you're 65. I mean, the one thing that we
• 35:33
  can't coach is height, right? We love height.
• 35:36
  So there's a little bit of like, all right, he may not have the
• 35:38
  whatever marks I think I need, but the dude 65 and got some
• 35:41
  athleticism. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:44
  And I was an aspiring decathlete, so I had done the my
• 35:47
  first one in 7th grade and I did that same decathlon every year
• 35:51
  all the way through high school. So I had some marks there.
• 35:56
  You know, I was obviously I always ran a decent 1500 and I
• 35:59
  was big. I threw the, I was good in the
• 36:01
  throws. I was a baseball guy and I was
• 36:03
  athletic enough so I managed the throws.
• 36:05
  Was that the, I'm going to say the real decathlon, Meaning did
• 36:08
  it have the pole vault? Because like an Alabama?
• 36:10
  Yeah, in Alabama. No, we don't do the javelin in
• 36:12
  Alabama. Well, actually we do now, but
• 36:14
  they used to trade the javelin for the triple jump, so I guess
• 36:16
  they probably had a javelin now. But I know some decathlons like
• 36:19
  this will skip the pole vaulting for maybe obvious reasons or
• 36:22
  whatnot. When you say you did the
• 36:24
  decathlon all the way through, did you do the pole vault as
• 36:25
  well? Yeah, that was the one event
• 36:27
  that we didn't do. So we we traded that for the
• 36:30
  triple jump. OK, OK.
• 36:31
  Maybe that's what I'm thinking. OK, that's that's what I was
• 36:33
  wondering. OK, OK, OK, OK.
• 36:34
  Keep going, keep going. Yeah, so I was, yeah, really
• 36:39
  absorbed with it. And that, you know, during the
• 36:41
  recruiting process, like I had reached out to maybe a couple
• 36:44
  big schools, like everyone has like Oregon on the list, right.
• 36:48
  So, you know, I probably reached out to them and they reach back
• 36:52
  and say, hey, maybe, you know, maybe you could walk on, you
• 36:54
  know, if you hit 69 or 610 this year.
• 36:57
  But it didn't, it wasn't realistic.
• 37:00
  Like by the time I, you know, got to the, you know, the
• 37:04
  application stuff, I just applied to like the local
• 37:07
  schools. And then by I, I, I honestly
• 37:09
  didn't make my decision until like the, the deposit deadline
• 37:12
  of, of May 1st. That's that's when I was like,
• 37:15
  hey, I told Uri I was going to Uri.
• 37:17
  So you wait a minute, you went to Rhode University of Rhode
• 37:20
  Island and you coach at Rhode Island now.
• 37:23
  I do, yeah. Yeah.
• 37:24
  And, and honestly, I had a couple friends who came down
• 37:27
  here and, you know, got older guys than, and so, you know,
• 37:33
  from Central Massachusetts, not teammates of mine, but guys that
• 37:36
  were going to other schools that ended up at Uri.
• 37:39
  So I, I knew a little bit about the program and when I did a
• 37:42
  visit, I hung out with those guys.
• 37:44
  And for me, like track was everything.
• 37:47
  And there were a few boxes in track and field that I really
• 37:50
  wanted to check off, coming from a school that had no facility at
• 37:54
  all. Like no outdoor, no indoor.
• 37:56
  We ran around in the halls when it was when the weather was bad
• 37:59
  and then we ran around in the parking lot or on grass when the
• 38:02
  weather was good. In high school you did that.
• 38:05
  So all this 69 and cross country and run the two mile, all that
• 38:09
  was parking lot stuff. You did not have any kind of,
• 38:11
  not even to go to a neighboring school for their track.
• 38:14
  No, we never did. You only saw a track at meats.
• 38:18
  Yeah, we would throw even for like discus and jab.
• 38:21
  We'd throw off of, of like the basketball court on, you know,
• 38:24
  into the field. So yeah, we we had.
• 38:28
  What about high jumps? Did you have a high jump pit and
• 38:30
  bar to practice with? Yeah, we had a high jump, we had
• 38:33
  high jump pads and we we jumped off like an old dusty gym floor.
• 38:36
  It's not there anymore. They like rebuilt the school a
• 38:39
  bunch of years back. But yeah, the the high jumping
• 38:43
  is like it was an old gym, like it like the three-point arc that
• 38:47
  couldn't even go into the corners because it was so
• 38:48
  narrow. So like the high jump area, it
• 38:51
  was basically like the entire, the entire gym floor.
• 38:53
  You know it's AI. Mean that has to be when college
• 38:57
  coaches are looking you know, I've coached for 10 years so
• 39:00
  this would have been like if I was like, oh this kids 69 I need
• 39:02
  a little bit higher or 6-8 whatever.
• 39:05
  But he's 65. I'd like to talk, you know, let
• 39:07
  me learn some more. And then you start telling me
• 39:09
  like, yeah, man, we, you know we're doing this in the
• 39:10
  hallways. I've got this gym that looks
• 39:12
  like it should have been in the movie Hoosiers.
• 39:14
  You know, this is where I do high jumping.
• 39:15
  Oh, and by the way, I'm really doing a lot of mileage.
• 39:18
  I'm I'm really doing 2 miles. There'd be a little bit like,
• 39:21
  well, wait a minute. If I get this kid and actually
• 39:23
  training for the high like I, I, I'd be excited about that.
• 39:26
  That's interesting. Yeah.
• 39:28
  But even even at the time, like even I think in college like it,
• 39:32
  there was still like a lot of old school methods where not not
• 39:37
  necessarily like jumpers going and out and running mileage or
• 39:40
  anything like that. But we, you know, that was even
• 39:43
  before the Academy, like the track and field Academy.
• 39:45
  So coaches weren't even like getting like certified with like
• 39:48
  their level 2, level 1, level 2, Level 3.
• 39:52
  And so we were, you know, in high school, we were just
• 39:56
  running mileage and doing hard workouts all the time and then
• 39:59
  doing technique when our legs were dead.
• 40:01
  And and then even in college you kind of get there and it's like
• 40:04
  that stuff is still sort of happening.
• 40:06
  You're running 10 by 200 and then the next day you're going
• 40:09
  to do a jump session and like. It never really, you know, so
• 40:15
  like I said earlier, my regret was sticking through and and do
• 40:19
  and continuing to run all these years where like now I, I kind
• 40:24
  of smartened up a little bit and at least I believe I have like I
• 40:28
  just wouldn't, I wouldn't do that now, you know, I wouldn't
• 40:31
  if I was trying to be a speed power guy, I would, I would get
• 40:34
  away from those things. You know, it's interesting if
• 40:37
  when you're listening to this, a few weeks ago we had Mike
• 40:42
  Mccarroll on the podcast. It was a pole vaulter and pole
• 40:45
  vault coach. And we're talking about some of
• 40:47
  the, he's done some Speaking of like the Texas Track and Field
• 40:49
  Coaches Association stuff. And he said he did one on like
• 40:52
  the bait, like how to basically coach a kid out of the hallway.
• 40:56
  Kids never pole vaulted. How do you do that?
• 40:58
  And then he did another one where it was a little bit more
• 41:00
  advanced and I asked him I was like, which one did you get the
• 41:02
  most like feedback from? And he's like, actually the
• 41:04
  second one, the, you know, call it a little bit more advanced.
• 41:06
  And he goes, you know, everybody knows the basics, Mike and you
• 41:09
  know that one. And I was like, bro, you're
• 41:13
  it's, that's not true. I'm sorry.
• 41:15
  One of my, I told him I told the story of did you know what
• 41:18
  Reddit is? Have you heard of Reddit?
• 41:20
  Yeah, yeah. Do you ever go on like do you
• 41:22
  understand the the how it's? Yeah, I do understand.
• 41:25
  I honestly have not I I haven't. Yeah.
• 41:27
  Don't do deep into it but. Yeah, it's, it's basically a
• 41:30
  message board. So you go there and they have
• 41:31
  all these what they call subreddits and it's every
• 41:33
  stinking topic in the world, Cats, politics, of course, track
• 41:38
  and field, pole vaulting, like all this.
• 41:40
  And it's a message board and I love going on there.
• 41:42
  And you will see questions from coaches and I'm not judging at
• 41:45
  all, but you will see questions from coaches, you know, asking
• 41:49
  the the body, you know, everybody wants to respond how
• 41:51
  to do some of the, I mean, just most basic stuff that you'd be
• 41:55
  like, wow, how do you not know that?
• 41:56
  Like everybody like go on YouTube and you can find that
• 41:59
  the basics are some of the most important aspects there are.
• 42:04
  And there are still plenty of guys and gals who don't have,
• 42:09
  I'm going to say they don't have access to the basics.
• 42:11
  But that's a little tough, right?
• 42:12
  With today's world of now YouTube and USTFCCA and Altus
• 42:16
  and USATF and like, it's even peer-to-peer.
• 42:19
  It's a little hard to to say they don't have access.
• 42:22
  But there's still plenty of basics that I guarantee you I
• 42:26
  could go if I, if I, if I, if I wanted to, I could go out and
• 42:30
  find you 10 coaches right now that say, hey, for high jumpers,
• 42:33
  yeah, we do a two mile warm up, then we do a 10 by 200.
• 42:36
  Then tomorrow we'll come back and we'll do some jumping, but
• 42:38
  full jumping, by the way, over the part not I'm talking about
• 42:40
  full jump, I guarantee you. And they'll think they're,
• 42:43
  they're doing it correctly. That's all they know.
• 42:44
  That's how they were coached. Yep.
• 42:47
  So that that is, there's a lot of basics that need the tilt
• 42:51
  still today in 20/25/2026 that need to be addressed.
• 42:55
  Yeah, it's, it's probably less prevalent now, but.
• 42:58
  I hope that's all. I hope that's as good, that's as
• 43:01
  good as responses I can give you.
• 43:02
  I can't say yeah for sure. I'm like Nope, Nope.
• 43:03
  I just hope that that's I hope. Well, from a recruiting
• 43:06
  perspective, like these kids, like we, we get into the weeds
• 43:09
  sometimes we talk about training and, and what they're doing and,
• 43:12
  and it seems like more kids are, are knowledgeable and they, they
• 43:15
  have a better understanding of what's.
• 43:17
  But is that? Hot nowadays?
• 43:19
  But is that because of the kids that you're recruiting?
• 43:22
  It could be, I mean. I bet I'm assuming you're
• 43:25
  probably not recruiting A6 foot high jumper, boy, right?
• 43:29
  OK, go. I'm going to say go do this.
• 43:33
  Don't go do this. Don't waste your time.
• 43:34
  Go talk to 10/6 foot high jumpers and say, hey, what do?
• 43:37
  What do you just what's an average jump day for you guys?
• 43:39
  What's an average week look like?
• 43:41
  Boy, I would not be surprised if half of them said, Oh yeah, man,
• 43:45
  it's tough. I'm, I'm, I'm a tough high
• 43:47
  jumper coach. I do 2 miles every day and I do
• 43:49
  quarter repeats and that's gonna make me a good high jumper
• 43:51
  because that's what coach says. I guarantee it.
• 43:53
  But we we still have a big think about your own coaching
• 43:57
  experience from high school. You had a distance coach that
• 44:00
  knew a lot from experience and things like that.
• 44:03
  And then you basically didn't have anybody else.
• 44:07
  That's not like I said, that's not uncommon.
• 44:09
  It's not the majority, I don't think, but that's not uncommon
• 44:11
  to have no one else or someone who a parent whose son is a high
• 44:15
  jumper, daughter's a high jumper and says, oh, well, I can help.
• 44:18
  And it's like, well, you know, when in high school I was a
• 44:21
  jumper and you know what we did? We did 2 miles, 10 by two
• 44:23
  hundreds, full jumps every day, whatever.
• 44:25
  You know we coach how we were coached until we get educated.
• 44:29
  Right. And some people don't take that
• 44:31
  leap, that next step of education.
• 44:34
  Yeah, they or they resist it because even even from my
• 44:37
  experience, like I, I had done a high jump camp I think going
• 44:41
  into my senior year at Wheaton College, I don't know if.
• 44:44
  You've ever heard of Paul Souza? Baby come.
• 44:46
  On I was just about to bring up Paul.
• 44:48
  I know you were. That's why I was like, come on,
• 44:49
  man. Yeah.
• 44:50
  So I was seriously considering Wheaton.
• 44:52
  Like it kind of came down to Uri and Wheaton and Syracuse and,
• 44:56
  and BU was that was kind of like my group and, and Wheaton
• 44:59
  obviously was the outlier being Division Three school, but they
• 45:03
  had a lot of success because Paul Souza was the head coach
• 45:07
  there. And you know, he was like a
• 45:08
  national level coach and really well respected.
• 45:11
  And so I would go and do his clinic.
• 45:13
  I would race cross country on like a Tuesday and then I would,
• 45:16
  I would drive, I would drive over to Wheaton, which is like a
• 45:19
  45 minute drive. And then I would go and
• 45:21
  literally high jump. And that's, you know, that was
• 45:23
  like a six or eight week thing in the fall of my senior year.
• 45:27
  And like the whole time, him and Mark Manjicotti, who is the
• 45:31
  Harvard coach now, they were like, dude, what, what are you
• 45:35
  doing? Like, Like you're so like you're
• 45:37
  good at high jump. You have like this ability,
• 45:39
  like, you know, you can be a decathlete.
• 45:41
  Like you got to stop. You got to stop doing all this
• 45:43
  distance stuff. And, and I was like, at the time
• 45:47
  just, you know, I don't know what the reason was exactly, but
• 45:50
  I was just resistant to it. I, you know, wanted to run cross
• 45:53
  country. I loved it and.
• 45:55
  And you're. I'll get the high jump when I
• 45:56
  get there. And and you're a kid.
• 45:58
  And what I mean by that is coach tells me to run 2 miles.
• 46:01
  I let me tell you, I'd have a the different thought if if a
• 46:05
  high jump I'm recruiting says, Hey, coach, thanks for
• 46:07
  recruiting me. I told my coach that I'm no
• 46:09
  longer doing cross country. I'd be like, whoa, wait, like I
• 46:12
  don't agree with you doing cross country, but coaches coach, it
• 46:15
  ain't it isn't unsafe. Like he's not doing something
• 46:17
  unsafe. So you're going to go and tell
• 46:19
  your coach what the I don't know, man, I'd have a little
• 46:21
  different. Like the attitude of that is a
• 46:23
  little. So you're a kid.
• 46:24
  Coach tells me to run. I run.
• 46:26
  That's what I would expect of you.
• 46:27
  You know, there's some authority there and you brought up
• 46:30
  another. So I know Paul very well.
• 46:31
  Love him to death. What a great singer, what a
• 46:33
  great coach. You brought up another good
• 46:34
  friend and Gill Podcast alum, Mark Mangiacati, one of the
• 46:37
  originals, baby, I think he was episode 4.
• 46:41
  He's an OG baby. So I love Mark to death, known
• 46:44
  him for forever. Love him and his wife.
• 46:46
  They're great, great people. OK, so you go to Uri and so do
• 46:52
  you become a decathlon decathlete.
• 46:54
  Yeah, that was part of the deal. I was, you know, I came in and
• 46:58
  and they had just they had basically.
• 47:01
  So number one was go to a place that had facilities.
• 47:05
  So like that was like my number one or one of three kind of like
• 47:09
  criteria for, for choosing the school.
• 47:12
  So you know, BU had the has like the, the Mecca indoor track,
• 47:17
  like Wheaton had a great 200m flat track Uri as well.
• 47:20
  And so those, all those schools checked off that box #2 was, was
• 47:29
  I, I would say like realistically, like are they set
• 47:31
  up to train decathletes? And so because that was what I
• 47:36
  wanted to do, you know, I was, I was almost even at that point
• 47:39
  too big to be like an elite high jumper.
• 47:41
  Like even at 6 foot 5, most of those guys are 160 lbs.
• 47:44
  Maybe I was like 2. I was pushing 200 going into
• 47:48
  college. And so, you know, I could, I
• 47:51
  could always be a solid high jumper in the, in the Atlantic
• 47:54
  10, but I, I felt like decathlon, like I was physique
• 47:58
  wise at decathlete already. And so they had just kind of got
• 48:02
  in this group of decathletes together.
• 48:05
  I was, I was maybe class number two or three.
• 48:07
  I would say the Atlantic 10 had had started doing a decathlon
• 48:12
  like a few years before that. So, you know, and that all
• 48:15
  played a role for sure. And so I felt like, you know, in
• 48:20
  that recruiting process, like Uri was going to be able to,
• 48:22
  they were going to be able to offer that.
• 48:24
  Like I could train with this, with this group, this core group
• 48:27
  for a number of years and develop with that group.
• 48:31
  And then the last one was just like success of the team for
• 48:35
  sure. I mean, that played a huge role.
• 48:37
  So that was the third one. They were very competitive in
• 48:41
  the conference, in the Atlantic 10 conference for at least at
• 48:44
  that point, like 8 years. Like they had won a number of
• 48:46
  championships. And although my high school was
• 48:49
  small, like that was still something that was like really
• 48:52
  important to us. Like we, we were always kind of
• 48:54
  contending to win league titles. And that was just so much fun,
• 48:57
  like strategizing what events everyone should be competing in
• 49:01
  to beat like our, you know, our rivals.
• 49:03
  And and so Uri was obviously showing that they had the
• 49:06
  ability to contend on a year, year to year basis.
• 49:10
  And so, yeah, those three things kind of came together All in all
• 49:13
  in one place. And so you or I, especially
• 49:14
  since I knew some of the guys in the team, a kid just the town
• 49:19
  next to me, had already committed back in the fall.
• 49:22
  And he was like one of the best throwers in in Central
• 49:24
  Massachusetts. And he was like trying to
• 49:27
  convince me to live within that that year and everything like
• 49:30
  that. So, yeah, all signs kind of
• 49:32
  pointed to One Direction. And so by the time I got to late
• 49:35
  April, yeah, it was it was decision time.
• 49:38
  And I chose Uri. So #1 makes a lot of sense.
• 49:41
  I'm not sure a lot of kids think of it though.
• 49:45
  But it's you're kind of a mature 18 year old based off of this
• 49:50
  discussion, because like you're actually there's thought to it,
• 49:52
  not just who offers me the most, who has the coolest uniforms,
• 49:57
  It's that you know, that they not even like necessarily that
• 50:01
  it, it's far or near from my home.
• 50:04
  Like because you talked about Oregon like it's like there
• 50:06
  seemed like there could have been a you could have gone to
• 50:08
  somewhere else, right. So love that, you know, it's
• 50:11
  like, all right, I don't have facilities.
• 50:12
  I know that I, I need something. You don't need every facility
• 50:15
  and every, you know, piece of equipment.
• 50:19
  Don't tell my boss as I said that, but you need something,
• 50:21
  right, You know, it's reach your potential anyway.
• 50:24
  So I love that 2 again, this is where I talk about that maturity
• 50:27
  of an 18 year old. Like for you to think about
• 50:30
  like, oh, are they set up for success in the multis?
• 50:33
  Because it's very easy because you don't know anything.
• 50:35
  You're not a multi in high school.
• 50:37
  You're you're a multi inventor. You're not in a combined
• 50:39
  inventor. And so you don't even know what
• 50:40
  that means. And what I mean by that is you
• 50:43
  don't know like you, you could easily think like, oh, do they
• 50:46
  have decent coaches in each category?
• 50:48
  Well, that must mean they're set up for decathlon that that's not
• 50:51
  that's not always true, right. You know, this probably now at
• 50:54
  this point in your career so that you were even thinking
• 50:57
  about, Oh, I can go there and be a successful to Kathleen no
• 51:00
  matter where I go. But actually you thinking about
• 51:02
  where are they set up for me to be successful?
• 51:04
  That that's an interesting caveat.
• 51:07
  And then again, the team aspect to all three, like I love these
• 51:11
  three. Like I would have loved to have
• 51:12
  recruited you, bro. This third part of like, Hey, I
• 51:14
  you know, that's cool. I want to be good, you know,
• 51:16
  individually, but I want to be I want to be pushing for
• 51:20
  championships like I want the I loved in high school doing the
• 51:23
  strategizing of what what events do I need to do and does, you
• 51:25
  know, my teammate Fred need to do and all this stuff to beat
• 51:28
  our rivals at that. That's a you know, you recruit
• 51:32
  1718 year old kids. I don't I don't perceive that in
• 51:35
  in most 1718 year old kids and again, no judgement because
• 51:39
  they're freaking 1718 year old kids.
• 51:40
  I have a lot of grace for them. So I love that like actual
• 51:43
  thought process of you as you're picking picking a school and you
• 51:47
  end up. So how far from home is is Uri
• 51:51
  from? 75 minutes not fire.
• 51:53
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, just decent ish.
• 51:55
  Yeah. And you end up down the road.
• 51:57
  That's so cool. So what did you end up at least
• 51:59
  starting out as a major? I, I was like, I was at the
• 52:04
  orientation, like the summer orientation in like June or July
• 52:08
  or something. And everyone was, you know,
• 52:11
  we're all supposed to kind of like head to our, I had to the
• 52:14
  major that we're interested in. And I was honestly, I was gonna
• 52:17
  go in as undecided. And then like Marine bio, I had
• 52:22
  a couple of other track guys that I knew coming in were gonna
• 52:26
  be marine bio majors. So I just walked over with them.
• 52:28
  And so then I just signed up for for like the Marine bio classes.
• 52:31
  And officially, that's what I started in, yeah.
• 52:34
  You didn't. And that's a big major at Uri
• 52:36
  too. Like that's a big one.
• 52:37
  You didn't get your well, there's so few marine biology.
• 52:40
  Anybody who has marine marine biology, I assume it's a big
• 52:42
  because you know, that's not every school for maybe obvious
• 52:45
  reasons. You didn't get your degree in
• 52:47
  marine biology. No, I didn't.
• 52:49
  I was about to say bro how in the world you a track could you
• 52:53
  give a marine biology? Yeah, yeah.
• 52:56
  No, I, I was, I had a really tough freshman year.
• 53:02
  I, I just did a lot of procrastinating.
• 53:05
  You know, I really did like with school.
• 53:07
  School has never been my Forte. Not, not, it is not necessarily
• 53:11
  because I was incapable. It was because like I just
• 53:13
  really didn't, didn't enjoy like the classes and through high
• 53:17
  school and middle school. And so by the time I got to
• 53:21
  college, I was like, holy, it was track.
• 53:24
  Like that was my priority. It was track and, and, and I
• 53:27
  prioritized that so much that I was almost unable to do it after
• 53:31
  after a year. So I had yeah, I had work to do,
• 53:35
  like kind of coming back after my freshman year.
• 53:37
  I, I did break AI did break my collarbone like at the start of
• 53:40
  outdoor. So like, things really spiraled
• 53:45
  after that. Yeah, I was going to ask, did
• 53:47
  that help or hurt? Because I could see that.
• 53:48
  Oh. That hurt bad.
• 53:49
  I was going to say I could see it helping of like, OK, I
• 53:52
  couldn't do track, so I really had to focus on the academics,
• 53:55
  but I could also see like, oh, something's been taken away from
• 53:57
  me. I can't do track.
• 53:58
  Well, what the hell is any of this matter at that point?
• 54:00
  So it it it was the ladder, huh? Kind of it was.
• 54:02
  The ladder, it was big time the ladder.
• 54:03
  So yeah, after that second, after the spring semester, I had
• 54:08
  some choices to make. And so then I, I just kind of
• 54:10
  just went all in. I was like, if I want to do what
• 54:12
  I love to do, do for the next few years, like I, I got to, I
• 54:15
  got to make some changes. So I did took some summer
• 54:19
  courses like for the first couple summers after that and I
• 54:22
  had a had, you know, ended up with like a three-point O GPA at
• 54:26
  the end of all of it. So kind of came back pretty well
• 54:29
  after a really, really challenging start.
• 54:33
  And and honestly as like my grades got better, like my
• 54:37
  performances, like every season got better and better too.
• 54:40
  What did you end up switching your major to?
• 54:44
  So I think I went back to like undecided for a short time, but
• 54:48
  because I had so many science courses already and because by
• 54:51
  the time I was a sophomore, I was like, all right, coaching,
• 54:54
  like, I love this so much that I'm just going to make my my
• 54:57
  life about about track and field.
• 54:58
  So about sophomore year, I decided that I was going to be a
• 55:01
  coach. And then it was like, all right,
• 55:03
  well, what major would best set me up for that lifestyle?
• 55:08
  And so I chose Kinesiology, which was another huge program
• 55:12
  here at Uri. It's, I mean, amongst athletes,
• 55:14
  it's probably the most popular, but we also have business and
• 55:18
  engineering, which are, which are big amongst our team at
• 55:20
  least. And so, yeah, kinesiology and
• 55:24
  you can go three different ways with that.
• 55:26
  Phys Ed was one, Health, health fitness, sorry.
• 55:30
  Exercise science was another one and health fitness was the 3rd.
• 55:35
  And I want health fitness and a lot of my class, you know, a lot
• 55:37
  of my classmates ended up getting into like personal
• 55:40
  training and gym ownership and that type of thing.
• 55:42
  But yeah, for me, like I, yeah, I still had to take all the
• 55:45
  sciences and felt like that was that was the right road and and
• 55:50
  I'm glad I did. Sometimes we want things to be
• 55:53
  like a light switch, you know, or the light is off or the
• 55:56
  light, light is on. And we think about like our
• 55:59
  career like that, like, oh, there was a moment where, you
• 56:02
  know, the light switched on and I knew I was going to be a track
• 56:04
  coach. And actually it's, you know,
• 56:06
  after 300, I'm finally figuring out it's more like a, a light
• 56:09
  fader, you know, right. Yeah, yeah.
• 56:13
  So you you mentioned clarified a little bit somewhere around
• 56:16
  freshman or sophomore year. You're like, OK, like like like
• 56:20
  you explained it almost like a light switch of like, OK, I know
• 56:23
  want to be a coach, I'm all in. But it actually seems more like
• 56:26
  that fader. Walk me through that fade.
• 56:30
  What what was it? Was it having track taken away
• 56:32
  from you because of a collarbone?
• 56:34
  Was it almost having track taken away from you because of
• 56:37
  academics and things like that? Was it a coach at Uri?
• 56:40
  What what what helped continue because you had some, you know,
• 56:43
  the fader wasn't at 0 when you went to college, Like you'd done
• 56:46
  some of this in high school. So it was a little, it was,
• 56:48
  let's call it 2010 to 20%, something kept nudging that up
• 56:51
  to 80 now and 100% what when you look back, what do you think it
• 56:55
  was? I don't know, maybe it's my
• 56:57
  general nature around the sport and just like being interested
• 57:00
  in what coach was doing. I was the guy that would would
• 57:03
  come in the coach's office like an hour before practice and just
• 57:06
  bother him, you know, So like, and that happens to me now.
• 57:09
  Like there's, there's always guys like in the office coming
• 57:11
  through and just asking questions and doing all this
• 57:14
  stuff. So that was, that was me at the
• 57:15
  time and, and honestly, like because of academics and I had
• 57:19
  like that big choice to make, whether to even come back to
• 57:21
  college for my sophomore year. And it's like, because I was so
• 57:25
  unsure of what I would do if I didn't come back to college.
• 57:28
  Like maybe that was maybe that scared me enough where I was
• 57:30
  like, all right, I got to, I got to like commit myself to this
• 57:33
  like a much higher level than I have in the past so that I can,
• 57:38
  you know, they do this thing that I enjoy doing at least for
• 57:40
  a few more years. And maybe it was like, you know,
• 57:43
  sometime during my sophomore year, I was like, you know what,
• 57:46
  this is so enjoyable. I'm just I'm just going to
• 57:48
  continue on with it. And then I mean, I've been all
• 57:51
  in ever since. So this we're talking now what
• 57:53
  2001 to to 2025 S 24 years of of my life and I'm 34 years old.
• 57:59
  So has been like really kind of dedicated and and to the love of
• 58:04
  this sport. So.
• 58:06
  I like how you put that, you know, when you said almost a
• 58:09
  fear of what would happen if I didn't come back or if I didn't
• 58:12
  have track. Cause a lot of times we think of
• 58:14
  fear as a negative thing. Right here, fear was a positive
• 58:18
  thing. I was like, hey, man, I know
• 58:19
  what's what's on the other side of this that doesn't involve
• 58:22
  track might not be so great. So I better stay on this side of
• 58:26
  it and stick with track and field, which means I'm going to
• 58:28
  have to make some lifestyle changes.
• 58:31
  Might not be the proper way. So but make some changes and it
• 58:34
  did and it worked out in positive.
• 58:36
  So that's that's a really cool like, you know, thinking about
• 58:38
  24, you know, 20 years ago. You can look back now and be
• 58:42
  like, man, I'm glad I made I went this.
• 58:44
  I went right on the fork, not left because it's had a lot, a
• 58:47
  lot of benefits beyond track and field.
• 58:49
  You start think about family and the kids that even positively
• 58:52
  affected and things like that in a career.
• 58:54
  You know, that's a lot of satisfaction there.
• 58:56
  That's that's really cool. I like that.
• 58:59
  So you were it's funny, we do hear this a lot with coaches,
• 59:03
  people who become track coaches. We talked about that gym rat
• 59:05
  mentality. You know, if you're going to be
• 59:07
  a basketball player, you could always be in the gym shooting.
• 59:08
  If you're going to be a decathlete, you're going to be
• 59:10
  the track 24/7, shot put, high jump, hurdles, etcetera.
• 59:15
  Coaches, it appears, have a higher propensity to be an
• 59:20
  office rat. They're always in the office of
• 59:23
  their coach. They're asking typically
• 59:26
  different types of questions than the other athletes.
• 59:28
  So, you know, a lot of times an athlete will ask a question of,
• 59:31
  you know, why are we doing this workout?
• 59:32
  And they're not necessarily, you know, some of it is 25% of it is
• 59:36
  pushing back of like, why in the hell are we doing this workout?
• 59:39
  But the other 75 is genuine curiosity, you know, just like
• 59:41
  why, why this workout? Someone who is going to become a
• 59:44
  track coach, we're learning. They're asking questions of
• 59:47
  like, hey, why do we do this workout?
• 59:48
  But then they follow it up with because we did this yesterday,
• 59:52
  why are we doing this today? Or hey, So what do you got
• 59:53
  planned tomorrow? Like you're, you're actually
• 59:55
  like taking the puzzle pieces of the workout and is if you're
• 59:59
  going to become a future coach or if you have, if you have the
• 1:00:02
  likelihood of becoming a coach, you're trying to put the puzzle
• 1:00:04
  pieces together like, oh, this is how the workouts fit
• 1:00:07
  together, not individual workouts.
• 1:00:09
  Like you're trying to see that that's what a coach does, right?
• 1:00:11
  You're you're looking at the whole week, the month, the year.
• 1:00:14
  Someone who's going to become a track coach is starting to
• 1:00:16
  trying to figure that out. So when you were in coach's
• 1:00:19
  office, were you not only asking those type questions, were you
• 1:00:23
  asking other questions of like, so how do you, you know, I see
• 1:00:26
  that catalog in your desk. So do you have to order
• 1:00:30
  equipment too or how do you do the buses?
• 1:00:32
  Were you asking those questions at some point in college as
• 1:00:34
  well? Maybe a little bit I, I, I
• 1:00:39
  definitely think I was influential in like that
• 1:00:42
  training program like during, during college.
• 1:00:46
  So a, a little more background about like Uri and like what it
• 1:00:49
  was like in the office at that time.
• 1:00:51
  So Coach Copeland, Coach John Copeland was the head coach at
• 1:00:54
  Uri. They're.
• 1:00:55
  Forever, right? Legend.
• 1:00:57
  Yeah, I know that name, Yeah. He stuck through until 2021.
• 1:01:00
  So we got us through COVID and so that ended his 39 year career
• 1:01:04
  at Uri, but he'd also done 10 years at UNH before that.
• 1:01:07
  And he had done a couple as a, as a grad student at UConn where
• 1:01:11
  he graduated back in like the 60s.
• 1:01:13
  So, so he had a 50 year coaching career.
• 1:01:17
  So he was old school, like he truly was old school.
• 1:01:20
  He was the head coach. He had this, he had, you know,
• 1:01:22
  this organizational, he had the place organized in a way that,
• 1:01:27
  you know, he, he knew could elicit like success within the
• 1:01:31
  program, right. He would hire young coaches as
• 1:01:34
  his assistants. So my, my event coach was
• 1:01:38
  actually a guy named Rob Witten. And he he was in his second
• 1:01:43
  year. I think we were his first
• 1:01:44
  recruiting class. I know that name.
• 1:01:46
  Rob Witten yeah, so he's he's now at the University of
• 1:01:49
  Southern Maine, Yeah, where he, he's from Maine.
• 1:01:53
  So like he's also back home and, and so he's, he's, he went back
• 1:01:59
  to coach the, the men's program. But since then, their programs
• 1:02:03
  have combined men and women. Another thing about Uri that's
• 1:02:07
  still relatively unique is that we're just, we're just a men's
• 1:02:10
  program. We also have a women's program
• 1:02:12
  here, but separate coaches, coaching staff, separate
• 1:02:14
  programs. Yeah, we're going to talk about
• 1:02:15
  that because we're going to have the women's coach on here.
• 1:02:18
  Hopefully, if you're listening to this now, it'll be next week
• 1:02:21
  if I plan this out correctly. So yeah, we're going to talk
• 1:02:23
  about that because that used to be the norm and now it feels
• 1:02:26
  like that's the abnorm. And so we're going to talk about
• 1:02:29
  how that works and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:02:30
  That's good preview for continued conversation.
• 1:02:34
  So at the time in 2009 when I came in like Coach Copeland was
• 1:02:37
  running the show. He has this young coach Rob, who
• 1:02:41
  is who is in his second year. And they had just gotten
• 1:02:45
  destroyed like in the conference the year before.
• 1:02:50
  And so like they had they had to like start to to make some
• 1:02:53
  changes. But anyways, you know, when you
• 1:02:58
  I think when you have like a coach that's been at the helm
• 1:03:00
  for so long and has been doing things a certain way and like it
• 1:03:03
  was a type of program with the jumpers, especially in the fall
• 1:03:06
  and the everyone was together, like they were all just training
• 1:03:08
  together and doing like similar workouts.
• 1:03:11
  You know, when we're on the stadium steps, like like even
• 1:03:13
  the throwers would be out there and the middle distance kids and
• 1:03:16
  like it was just kind of like one of those programs.
• 1:03:19
  And so, you know, I was and that's the stuff I like to do
• 1:03:22
  anyways. I like to I like the pain,
• 1:03:24
  right. And so, you know, when I was
• 1:03:27
  when I was sitting here in Rob's office and we would discuss
• 1:03:30
  training and like what we're doing today and tomorrow and the
• 1:03:32
  rest of the week. I think like my influence in
• 1:03:36
  like that type of work was probably outweighed what he knew
• 1:03:43
  we should maybe be up to on like a day-to-day basis, especially
• 1:03:47
  since Cope was doing that stuff too.
• 1:03:49
  So I don't think we ever really got to the point of like this
• 1:03:53
  modern training style where it's like we're training like the
• 1:03:57
  we're training neuromuscularly as opposed to just like, all
• 1:04:00
  right, we'll hit the weight room really hard, do heavy stuff.
• 1:04:03
  We'll go out and do like long workouts, like long, really hard
• 1:04:06
  workouts. Bodies always kind of beat up,
• 1:04:09
  but like, hey, that's good for you.
• 1:04:10
  So I think like he knew, he knew that wasn't right, right?
• 1:04:15
  But he knew that wasn't, you know, that wasn't going to get
• 1:04:19
  us to where we really wanted to be, but we were all in on all in
• 1:04:23
  on it and we believed in it too. And that definitely makes a big
• 1:04:25
  difference 100%. So at the time, like we were
• 1:04:28
  just a just like a tough team like that, Like you said, it
• 1:04:31
  makes you tough. Since then, we've obviously like
• 1:04:35
  programming has changed a lot, but you know what, whatever what
• 1:04:39
  Cope had built for all those decades, like logistically, like
• 1:04:43
  all those types of things kind of remain the same.
• 1:04:45
  But we'll get into that I'm sure later.
• 1:04:48
  Do you, do you ever think you're 34?
• 1:04:51
  You know, cope Coach forever. I love him.
• 1:04:54
  What a legend. When you're 20 years from now,
• 1:04:57
  you'll be 5430 years from now, you'll be 64.
• 1:04:59
  You'll probably be, you know, hopefully you're retired by 64,
• 1:05:03
  to be honest with you, but just for your own sake.
• 1:05:05
  But, you know, 50-60 years old. Do you think kids are going to
• 1:05:08
  be like, yeah, I was with Coach Balzell and you know, he's 5560.
• 1:05:13
  He's old school and. I know.
• 1:05:18
  Like it's it's easy. It's easy for us to think about
• 1:05:20
  our, you know, coaches who are older.
• 1:05:22
  It's like they're old school. We're going to be, you're going
• 1:05:26
  to be old school one day. They're going to be like, yeah,
• 1:05:28
  he used to do XY and Z and you know, whoever they're going to
• 1:05:31
  be talking to be like, wow, really?
• 1:05:32
  Oh, man, that's crazy. He didn't have coaching
• 1:05:35
  education. And like, no, no, he did, you
• 1:05:36
  know, it's just interesting how that that's going to met out.
• 1:05:40
  You are going to be old school one day, brother.
• 1:05:42
  And we will not be doing the same things today in 2055 or
• 1:05:46
  whatever. It'll be different in some forms
• 1:05:48
  or fashion. There's still some things today
• 1:05:50
  that you do that Copeland and those guys, those old school
• 1:05:53
  guys did as well. There's still some things you do
• 1:05:55
  today. There's something maybe small,
• 1:05:57
  maybe large, but there's some things you do.
• 1:05:59
  It just evolves. It is really what it is.
• 1:06:01
  So I just it was just funny when you said he was really old
• 1:06:04
  school and I was like, Trent, you're going to be old school
• 1:06:06
  one day. That's just cool little like
• 1:06:09
  look in the future type thing. So you had an influence.
• 1:06:12
  So you're you're you're an office rat.
• 1:06:14
  You're in there asking questions, just observing how
• 1:06:19
  people do things and and you're in you're like, OK, this is it.
• 1:06:22
  I'm going to be a track coach. So you you end up graduating,
• 1:06:25
  you get a degree in kinesiology, health and fitness.
• 1:06:28
  What's your first route to become a track coach?
• 1:06:32
  I got into some some like private coaching like that first
• 1:06:36
  year. So I think that was kind of like
• 1:06:43
  the, the the plan was to was to do a bunch of private coaching
• 1:06:46
  like at least to start. I had during the summer times
• 1:06:51
  for I think it was three years, including the year after I
• 1:06:54
  graduated, I spent the summer on Martha's Vineyard and I was, I
• 1:06:58
  was just working out there and, and honestly, like my wife and I
• 1:07:02
  were, we were at that point together like we, we thought
• 1:07:07
  maybe Martha's Vineyard was like, could be like the life.
• 1:07:10
  And I would just, I would just become a teacher and I would, I
• 1:07:12
  would coach at Martha's Vineyard High School or something like
• 1:07:14
  that. I don't know that I've ever been
• 1:07:16
  there. I've heard it.
• 1:07:17
  When you say working there, what does that mean?
• 1:07:19
  Like, I don't know. Martha's Vineyard in my head is
• 1:07:21
  like a big oh gosh, what do they call those things?
• 1:07:26
  Like on Sunday farmers market, It's a big farmers market.
• 1:07:28
  I have no clue. Literally I have no, you might
• 1:07:30
  be laughing. Like what do you you're an
• 1:07:31
  idiot. It's a city.
• 1:07:32
  I have no clue. What do you mean?
• 1:07:33
  You went to Martha's Vineyard and were working and you and I
• 1:07:36
  don't know if you're married, but at least future wife is
• 1:07:39
  talking about like this may be the place.
• 1:07:40
  What does that mean? It was just an island.
• 1:07:43
  It's an island off the coast of Massachusetts.
• 1:07:45
  It's like comprised of like 6 towns but it's just a regional
• 1:07:49
  school called Martha's Vineyard High School.
• 1:07:51
  OK, so there's a high school. OK, OK, OK.
• 1:07:53
  Yeah. And there's, I don't know how
• 1:07:54
  many residents there are through the year.
• 1:07:56
  There might be like 30,000 or something like that, residents
• 1:07:58
  that live there. But then it balloons to like
• 1:08:01
  like well over 100,000 during the summertime.
• 1:08:03
  Yeah, I know. It's very popular.
• 1:08:05
  Yeah, OK. I I.
• 1:08:06
  And I would, I was like working for a restaurant and I was, I
• 1:08:10
  was kind of like running like the the warehouse for this huge
• 1:08:13
  restaurant. OK, so it's making good money.
• 1:08:16
  This might be, hey, this, you know there's worse places to
• 1:08:19
  live, right? There's a reason why it balloons
• 1:08:20
  100 4000. It's a very coveted place to go
• 1:08:24
  to and and probably obviously to live.
• 1:08:26
  So you guys were thinking like, oh, OK, maybe this coaching
• 1:08:29
  thing, but maybe Martha's Vineyard for our for our lives.
• 1:08:33
  Yeah, I mean, the idea honestly, was to like, was to coach at
• 1:08:36
  Martha's Vineyard High School. Like, that was kind of like the
• 1:08:39
  the idea at the time because I just spent summers there and we
• 1:08:41
  enjoyed it so much. Like, it was a really, really
• 1:08:43
  fun place to be. And so we were thinking about
• 1:08:46
  possibly settling down there. And then I kind of came to this
• 1:08:50
  like this, this during, you know, the year after I graduate,
• 1:08:54
  right after the summertime when it's like, all right, like the
• 1:08:57
  restaurant's going to close down for the late fall and we're
• 1:09:01
  going to have to move on and do some other things.
• 1:09:03
  Because a lot of those restaurant people, man, they
• 1:09:05
  don't get out of it. They just, they just get stuck
• 1:09:07
  every year. They'll, they'll go Martha's
• 1:09:09
  Vineyard, then they'll go to Aspen and they'll, they'll do
• 1:09:11
  the winter thing and then let's keep going back and forth.
• 1:09:14
  And that's their life forever. So I was like, I was like, I'm
• 1:09:17
  not so sure I want that. So I had to tell like the
• 1:09:20
  restaurant owner, I was like, I'm just getting out of this.
• 1:09:22
  And so then I, I ended up kind of going back to my hometown in,
• 1:09:26
  in Massachusetts and spend some time with some individual
• 1:09:30
  athletes to students in private coaching.
• 1:09:33
  I played a lot of golf. I rode my bicycle and raced my
• 1:09:37
  bicycle thousands of miles that year for sure.
• 1:09:41
  Like BMX or like road bike? Road bike.
• 1:09:44
  Yeah, road bike. Yeah, When did those two things?
• 1:09:47
  Those are, well, one's not necessarily unique, but golfing,
• 1:09:51
  a lot of people Golf Rd. racing is still fairly unique in the
• 1:09:54
  sense of like, there's not a my neighbor's not a Rd. racer, but
• 1:09:57
  my, my neighbor plays golf, right?
• 1:09:59
  When do those two things come into your lives?
• 1:10:04
  I had, I don't know, I when I was younger I just rode around
• 1:10:07
  in trails on like a legit mountain bike.
• 1:10:08
  I wasn't racing or anything when I was a kid, but I enjoyed it.
• 1:10:12
  And so I ended up getting a decent road bike probably when I
• 1:10:14
  was, I don't know, sometime in high school.
• 1:10:17
  And so, you know, a few years later when I had an opportunity
• 1:10:20
  to ride a lot because I would bring out to the Vineyard and I
• 1:10:23
  would, I would use it as like my commuter also.
• 1:10:25
  So I was just on my bike a lot. And then that year I ended up
• 1:10:28
  getting into some racing and, and, and really enjoyed it.
• 1:10:32
  But it's an expensive sport and I didn't have any money.
• 1:10:34
  So yeah, so it was, it was just like I need to, I need to move
• 1:10:38
  my life forward. And that was when I actually
• 1:10:40
  started looking into collegiate coaching jobs.
• 1:10:43
  Yeah. Why collegiate?
• 1:10:45
  And I mean, you don't necessarily have a teaching
• 1:10:47
  degree, so maybe that's the answer.
• 1:10:50
  But why college coaching over high school?
• 1:10:54
  Yeah, that that probably is the answer because I didn't have a
• 1:10:57
  teaching degree and I guess you can still coach in high school.
• 1:11:01
  But pay like I, I at some point I had to make some money.
• 1:11:05
  So pay, pay. Is a good lesson.
• 1:11:08
  Yeah. And so, you know, I knew that
• 1:11:11
  like there was no way I could ever just live on a high school
• 1:11:14
  coach's salary and just do private coaching.
• 1:11:16
  I guess if you start a club and there are ways around it for
• 1:11:20
  sure. But yeah, so I just, I started
• 1:11:23
  looking online and, you know, talking to, you know, to Rob
• 1:11:28
  and, and seeing if he could, you know, if he had any
• 1:11:31
  recommendations or anything like that.
• 1:11:33
  Like, hey, if you hear anything, if you hear openings, just like
• 1:11:35
  let me know. And honestly, as a, as a
• 1:11:38
  decathlete, as a former decathlete and, and still
• 1:11:40
  training, to be honest, I, it definitely had there's a lot
• 1:11:44
  more open doors for you for sure.
• 1:11:46
  People are looking for that. Yeah, if they have a, if they
• 1:11:50
  have an open throws position or an open jumps position or
• 1:11:53
  hurdles or sprints, like often times they'll just post it as
• 1:11:58
  you know, decathlete preferred or something like that.
• 1:12:02
  And so, yeah, the kind of the first one that came up, or one
• 1:12:06
  of the first ones that came up was Assumption College, which is
• 1:12:09
  a division two school up in Massachusetts where my sister
• 1:12:12
  happened to attend through her years as a track and cross
• 1:12:17
  country runner. And so I go up there, talk to
• 1:12:22
  the coach, there was like one other person interested, even
• 1:12:25
  interested in the job because it was basically like volunteer
• 1:12:28
  pay. I think it was.
• 1:12:30
  I was, I was getting paid $8000 that first year.
• 1:12:33
  And so yeah, I would go up every day.
• 1:12:35
  I was living in Sutton and I would commute 35 minutes to
• 1:12:38
  Worcester and I would just go and and and do everything I
• 1:12:43
  could possibly do to help that team, which was not in good
• 1:12:46
  shape when I got there. It's funny when you say, you
• 1:12:49
  know, you, it's, you can't slash.
• 1:12:52
  It's hard to make money as a high school coach, not a high
• 1:12:54
  school teacher, you know, because, you know, a stipend is
• 1:12:58
  probably anywhere between 1500 to you know, I'm sure there's
• 1:13:01
  some suburbs that are doing 5000 for their coaches and yet you
• 1:13:04
  take a job for 8000, you know, but but maybe there's like, oh,
• 1:13:08
  but you know, I'm not staying at assumption at 8000 that that is
• 1:13:11
  a stepping stone for a more decent payday.
• 1:13:15
  Very true about decathletes. You know, it's interesting, you
• 1:13:18
  know, I'm in a very unique spot. This sounds, this is not very
• 1:13:22
  humble when I say this, but I've probably have deep dive
• 1:13:26
  interviewed more coaches than track and field coaches in
• 1:13:28
  America than anybody, right? You know, where 300 and
• 1:13:31
  something. And so some of the top, I mean,
• 1:13:35
  I'm talking about top, like I've always said that like there's
• 1:13:37
  some amazing coaches that like really, really good coaches.
• 1:13:39
  And then there's about 5 that are just a step above Booshex
• 1:13:44
  Nader is an automatic like that's an example.
• 1:13:46
  I give a damn path, etcetera. And there are some of the
• 1:13:50
  greatest coaches that I've had on here on the show.
• 1:13:53
  And when I talk about grand, I'm talking about big body of work,
• 1:13:57
  not just that they had an Olympian or one gold medalist.
• 1:14:00
  I'm talking about multiple medalist, multiple educational
• 1:14:03
  as well. Like they educate a lot of
• 1:14:04
  people. So like I think about Brooks
• 1:14:07
  Johnson, I think about Cliff Ravalto, I think about Harry
• 1:14:11
  Mara and those three specific individuals.
• 1:14:15
  Like like Brooks Johnson really changed.
• 1:14:17
  He was an OG too. I think he's episode 20 or
• 1:14:20
  something. But he talked about like you are
• 1:14:24
  not a sprints coach, you are not a jumps coach, you're not a
• 1:14:28
  distance coach, you're a track and field coach.
• 1:14:30
  That all the events are the same, the same objective move
• 1:14:35
  the center of mass down the runway or in a circle.
• 1:14:39
  You just do it in a different way in a circle.
• 1:14:41
  Maybe you're you're, you're going, you're going in circle,
• 1:14:44
  you know, the spin move for the shot or in the javelin, you're
• 1:14:48
  just moving your center of mass down that runway and now put it
• 1:14:51
  into the javelin, the 100 meter dash, the long jump, etcetera.
• 1:14:55
  And those three guys who are, you know, I'd have an argument
• 1:14:59
  that they're not three of the top coaches we've ever had in
• 1:15:02
  America and certainly maybe this world as well.
• 1:15:04
  Brooks Cliff and and Harry Mara, They've coached a few more than
• 1:15:08
  a few good people. They, they were very adamant
• 1:15:10
  that, oh, I'm not a, I'm not even a, you know, like a, like
• 1:15:13
  Cliff is very much known for high jump and he's like, I'm not
• 1:15:15
  a high jump coach. I'm a track and field coach.
• 1:15:17
  Harry Mera, obviously known for the decathlon and what he's done
• 1:15:20
  in the multis throughout his whole career, but he's like,
• 1:15:22
  I'm, I'm not a decathlon coach. I'm a track and field coach, you
• 1:15:25
  know, and, and a Brooks Johnson, who, you know, he's the one guy
• 1:15:28
  that is hard to, to pinpoint. You know, he was the distance
• 1:15:30
  coach at Stanford, coached Petty, Petty, Sue Plumber, but
• 1:15:33
  also coached many 100 meter 98 guys.
• 1:15:36
  You know, and it's like that's the example is you're a coach.
• 1:15:39
  And so decathletes are very sought after, somewhat not right
• 1:15:47
  in the sense of that. Just because you're a decathlon,
• 1:15:49
  the cathlete or have to athlete doesn't mean you know how to
• 1:15:51
  coach the throws and stuff like that, but you certainly have a
• 1:15:54
  higher propensity. Heck, we even here, you know, we
• 1:15:57
  hire almost, not almost. I think every one of our sales
• 1:16:00
  people are former track coaches or track athletes.
• 1:16:03
  When we get a decathlete applying for a job, it's it's a
• 1:16:06
  psychological thing. Dude, We automatically go, oh,
• 1:16:10
  so trentzo decathlete, huh? All right there.
• 1:16:13
  There's a you're automatically some percentage above from the
• 1:16:17
  start line. Then someone who was a jumper or
• 1:16:21
  hammer throw, whatever. It's just an automatic.
• 1:16:22
  It's really, really odd. We covet decathletes just
• 1:16:26
  because of your breath of, of potential knowledge.
• 1:16:29
  Again, you don't just because you're multi doesn't mean you
• 1:16:32
  even care about throws, for crying out loud, you know, but
• 1:16:34
  it's when you get the right person.
• 1:16:35
  So, so assumption. So what?
• 1:16:37
  What was it like? You know, coaching versus being
• 1:16:41
  coached is two different things. And we sometimes think because
• 1:16:44
  you were coached, you can be a coach.
• 1:16:45
  And that's that's certainly not true.
• 1:16:48
  What was it like going to the other side of the coin, if you
• 1:16:52
  will, and now instead of being told what to do and having some
• 1:16:55
  influence and do that, but you know, being told, hey, you're
• 1:16:57
  going to do this, today's the workout is this and that to now
• 1:17:01
  you're the person prescribing the workout.
• 1:17:03
  You've got to decide what does this group do on Wednesday,
• 1:17:06
  Thursday, Friday? What was that initial?
• 1:17:10
  How did you handle that initial change and responsibility?
• 1:17:15
  I actually like you know how you're talking about the light
• 1:17:17
  switch, like the dimmer basically, I think I think like
• 1:17:22
  this wasn't a situation where I just like switched from one to
• 1:17:26
  the other. I think honestly there what
• 1:17:28
  there was like that transition phase like right through great
• 1:17:31
  point. And so like, it's like so many
• 1:17:37
  other like really young coaches, like I got back into training
• 1:17:40
  like as I was, as I was programming and coaching like
• 1:17:45
  these, these athletes, I got back into training myself.
• 1:17:48
  So it, it really was like a very kind of slow transition.
• 1:17:54
  And so, yeah, that that first year I was coaching basically
• 1:17:58
  the, the jumpers and the Maltese and I, we had men and women
• 1:18:02
  together and I was, I was enjoying it.
• 1:18:06
  The head coach was Stacey Wentz, who I, I don't believe is in
• 1:18:09
  coaching anymore, but she, you know, she had kind of jumped
• 1:18:12
  around to a few different jobs, but she, she gave me that first
• 1:18:15
  opportunity and I will forever be grateful.
• 1:18:19
  And so for that first year, made no money, drove up, you know,
• 1:18:23
  did, did my commute every single day, five days a week.
• 1:18:27
  And, and that wasn't the expectation.
• 1:18:29
  Maybe it wasn't five, maybe it was like 4 days a week or
• 1:18:31
  something, but that wasn't the expectation.
• 1:18:34
  But that's, that's, that's how I felt.
• 1:18:37
  I would kind of rise up the ranks at a, at a higher pace or
• 1:18:43
  at a quicker pace than than others might be able to do.
• 1:18:46
  Because I and everyone, everyone kind of tells you if you get
• 1:18:48
  into coaching like you're going to, you're going to, you're
• 1:18:53
  probably going to struggle like financially for, for a while,
• 1:18:56
  you're going to kind of pay your dues.
• 1:18:58
  And so I just, I always had it in my mind that that I was going
• 1:19:02
  to have to do that and I was going to be, have to be willing
• 1:19:04
  to do that. And I, and I just was.
• 1:19:06
  And so I paid my dues. I worked harder than and more
• 1:19:10
  than I than I was being paid to to do.
• 1:19:13
  And so at the end of that year, she actually let our throws
• 1:19:18
  coach go and I took over the throwers for like a significant
• 1:19:22
  pay raise. I think I was getting paid like
• 1:19:24
  2020 grand for that second year. So I had all of the field event
• 1:19:28
  athletes and for those field event coaches out there, it's
• 1:19:32
  not the same as it's not the same like time like time spent
• 1:19:38
  as it is with like sprinters and distance kids because of like
• 1:19:42
  the technical aspects. So it was like a lot more just
• 1:19:45
  like hands on coaching and stuff.
• 1:19:47
  And so yeah, I basically just coached every single day for
• 1:19:52
  that second year. I would just, from morning to
• 1:19:54
  night, I would just coach all day long with with the various
• 1:19:56
  groups. And so that was, yeah, that was
• 1:20:00
  kind of an outlier year for sure.
• 1:20:03
  And then the next year, Stacy actually moved on to another
• 1:20:07
  school. And that day that she told the
• 1:20:10
  AD that she was leaving, he calls me and offers me the job.
• 1:20:14
  Like it was sometime in the summertime, I can't remember
• 1:20:16
  exactly when. Wait a minute, you're 24, Five
• 1:20:20
  ish. Yeah, Well, I guess first of
• 1:20:23
  all, just because the offer doesn't mean you accept it.
• 1:20:25
  Did you accept? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:28
  Wow, dude. Stacy, Stacy actually called me
• 1:20:31
  that summer. He was probably, I don't know,
• 1:20:33
  say it was noon. She called me and and Nick, the
• 1:20:35
  AD called me like at 2:00. It was like it was like hours
• 1:20:39
  later to offer me the job. She called him to tell me that
• 1:20:42
  she was leaving. And then he called to tell me
• 1:20:43
  that he called to ask me if I would take the job.
• 1:20:46
  Wow, that had to be Well, well, tell us, what were your feelings
• 1:20:49
  when they called, assuming that you didn't, when Stacy called
• 1:20:52
  you that you weren't. You don't strike me as this
• 1:20:55
  person, but no judgement if you if you did, you don't strike me
• 1:20:58
  as a person going, oh, well, that's my job.
• 1:21:00
  Like like as official. You know exactly.
• 1:21:03
  OK, so so when the AD actually does call you and says, hey, you
• 1:21:07
  know, maybe you probably know Stacey Sleeving, we'd like to
• 1:21:10
  offer you the job. What what I mean, that feels
• 1:21:13
  like a, I'm going to say a gut punch, but typically that means
• 1:21:17
  a negative, right? But but you're kind of like a,
• 1:21:18
  like, it's a, like a shock, like a, you know, a cold shower hits
• 1:21:21
  you. It's like, whoa, wait a minute,
• 1:21:23
  I, I, I have this opportunity. Like what were your thoughts
• 1:21:26
  when no? That is exactly how I was
• 1:21:29
  feeling like I I don't know if I've ever actually felt like
• 1:21:34
  like emotionally like those feelings that strong before, and
• 1:21:37
  I definitely have not felt them since then.
• 1:21:40
  Like it was just like while my life like the the decision.
• 1:21:44
  I like all these decisions I've I had made, from not playing
• 1:21:48
  basketball to going to Uri to, yeah, that's right, choosing to
• 1:21:54
  stay in school to all these things, to finally telling my
• 1:21:59
  boss at the Vineyard I wasn't coming back.
• 1:22:03
  And he was pissed at me, by the way.
• 1:22:04
  I didn't mention that to now It's like Nick calls me, he's
• 1:22:09
  like offers me this job, like a real job.
• 1:22:11
  Like I can actually live on this.
• 1:22:13
  And and so, yeah, we had just bought a house.
• 1:22:17
  My wife and I yeah, I know it's kind of crazy.
• 1:22:20
  We're just bought a house in like northern Rhode Island and
• 1:22:24
  it was a total fixer upper. So like we had this huge project
• 1:22:28
  on our hands, but and it was just going to be all work, you
• 1:22:31
  know, it's going to be all my time, my effort and all this
• 1:22:34
  stuff. And so now I have like this, you
• 1:22:38
  know, this new job opportunity. So of course, like I accepted
• 1:22:41
  it. And yeah, that was like, kind of
• 1:22:43
  like the start of like my professional life, like true
• 1:22:45
  start. Yeah, I like how you said that
• 1:22:48
  because, you know, I, I very much dislike that even today in
• 1:22:53
  20252026, there are jobs that are $8000 right now and 20,000
• 1:22:59
  and I just, I, I, I just dislike it.
• 1:23:01
  I don't believe in paying your dues, to be real frank with
• 1:23:04
  that. Now, that doesn't mean I think
• 1:23:05
  you out of college should have been the head coach of Oregon.
• 1:23:08
  There is experience that you need to go up there.
• 1:23:10
  But paying your dues is typically just like you
• 1:23:12
  described. It's typically, oh, you know, I
• 1:23:14
  had to volunteer or I had to make 8000, which might as well
• 1:23:17
  be a volunteer and things like that.
• 1:23:19
  And it's like, no, that's not true.
• 1:23:20
  You should you should make a livable wage from the jump.
• 1:23:23
  Now that might not be that might not be 100,000, but you know,
• 1:23:26
  maybe in today's livable wage, maybe 4050 thousand is, is
• 1:23:29
  livable and whatever it might have been back then.
• 1:23:31
  But but to to go through that process and then to become the
• 1:23:36
  head coach and have a livable wage like the like, I love how
• 1:23:39
  you immediately were like all those decisions I made, not
• 1:23:42
  doing basketball, going to Uri, not dropping out after freshman
• 1:23:47
  year. Like they all stack to this
• 1:23:50
  moment. And it kind of sounds like it
• 1:23:52
  kind of just hit you, no? It was like winning.
• 1:23:54
  It was like winning the lottery. Yeah, it was like winning like
• 1:23:57
  $1,000,000 lottery. I was like, I couldn't even
• 1:23:59
  believe. Tell me.
• 1:24:01
  Tell me you hung up and immediately called your wife.
• 1:24:05
  I was at home like it was a summer time, so I was, I was
• 1:24:08
  probably working on the House. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:12
  I mean, yeah, it was crazy. Like I, I think back to, I
• 1:24:16
  haven't thought about that moment for a while.
• 1:24:18
  So now this kind of like brings that back up and like, it was
• 1:24:20
  just like one of the best, certainly one of the best
• 1:24:22
  moments in my life. OK, so far, you know we're an
• 1:24:27
  hour and change in. You seem like a guy that you're
• 1:24:31
  a planner. I kind of get that sense from
• 1:24:33
  you, like you like to make plans, although you may push
• 1:24:38
  them off a little bit. You talked about a little bit of
• 1:24:40
  procrastination, but that's OK. We all have that.
• 1:24:43
  That's great. I appreciate you again being
• 1:24:44
  open and authentic there. You, you, you accept the job,
• 1:24:49
  you hang up, you tell the wife, hey, let's, let's, let's get
• 1:24:53
  steak tonight. We're we're going to be OK.
• 1:24:55
  Yeah, I know. I know how this goes, bro.
• 1:24:58
  But you also know, OK, I'm the head honcho now.
• 1:25:02
  I'm the head coach, not an assistant, not a part time.
• 1:25:06
  The buck stops with me. You're an intelligent young man
• 1:25:10
  that you even Stacy's probably did a great job with what she
• 1:25:13
  had with her and everything like there.
• 1:25:14
  But there's things you would have done different.
• 1:25:15
  We all have every assistant coach has that that you know
• 1:25:18
  I've probably done this different.
• 1:25:19
  I'd focus here whatever blah blah.
• 1:25:21
  What are some of the first things that you put into action
• 1:25:23
  now? Is the the head coach of
• 1:25:25
  Assumption Well? During that conversation, Nick
• 1:25:28
  was like, he, he made it a point at the very end to say, and
• 1:25:32
  Trent, this is your team. And, and like, and I, I, I don't
• 1:25:37
  remember too much of the conversation.
• 1:25:39
  I mean, we probably talked for 20 minutes, but at the end he
• 1:25:42
  said that. And like, that's the part that
• 1:25:43
  I, that I still remember to this day.
• 1:25:46
  And, and so at that point, I honestly like a lot of what went
• 1:25:51
  through my mind was what would Rob do?
• 1:25:55
  And I know he wasn't even the head coach at Uri, but it was
• 1:25:58
  like, like, because our relationship was so good and I
• 1:26:02
  trusted him as a coach. It's not that I didn't trust
• 1:26:05
  Cope. It's just like I, I wasn't
• 1:26:07
  spending time with, with Cope like I was with Rob.
• 1:26:10
  And so a lot of it was, you know, I, I kind of knew how Rob
• 1:26:14
  did his organization. Like, yeah, he, and like you
• 1:26:17
  said earlier, like he would, we would talk about like orders
• 1:26:20
  and, and just like the, the meet schedule and like what is
• 1:26:25
  appropriate for, you know, for me to go, what meets I, I should
• 1:26:28
  go to. And, and so like, I had a basic
• 1:26:30
  background of like, of this, of these types of things.
• 1:26:33
  And plus the first two years, that assumption, like a lot of,
• 1:26:36
  you know, a lot of those conversations were happening
• 1:26:37
  with Stacey and I was like, all right, what should we do as a
• 1:26:39
  team? You know, and, and, and just a
• 1:26:42
  little background about assumption.
• 1:26:43
  We started like worst in the NE 10, the Northeast 10.
• 1:26:47
  That was the conference and, and so the idea was to build it like
• 1:26:51
  we had here at Uri, like we wanted A-Team.
• 1:26:54
  We didn't want just individuals trying to get kids to NCAA's.
• 1:26:57
  It's like we wanted to we wanted to do some things in the
• 1:27:00
  conference. And so that's when like I had
• 1:27:02
  full control over over like the direction of the team and we
• 1:27:07
  went just like full throttle, like straight for conference.
• 1:27:10
  Like, you know, after two years it was like, all right, we've
• 1:27:12
  done some good things. We've started to move up a
• 1:27:14
  little bit and now it's like, let's, let's fill in the gaps,
• 1:27:17
  like let's do the, you know, in the recruiting process and let's
• 1:27:20
  go after, let's go after some conference titles in a
• 1:27:23
  conference that like, people definitely told me that you
• 1:27:28
  couldn't, you just like wouldn't be able to move up, you know.
• 1:27:31
  And so there's a, a, a chip on your shoulder, like when people
• 1:27:35
  say things like that. And so, yeah, we, we quickly did
• 1:27:39
  move up. We were contending during, you
• 1:27:41
  know, during the next couple years and I'd, we never won a
• 1:27:45
  conference title, but we finished second, third on the
• 1:27:49
  women's side and on the men's side, like towards the end of my
• 1:27:51
  career there. What?
• 1:27:53
  What do you know, one of the things I, I don't think you
• 1:27:57
  know, you were an assistant coach a very short amount of
• 1:27:59
  time here, but you know, my experience is that we don't do a
• 1:28:02
  very good job as head coaches of training, mentoring, teaching
• 1:28:07
  our assistant coaches to become future head coaches.
• 1:28:09
  That, you know, the, the vast majority of people when they
• 1:28:11
  become a head coach have no clue what it actually takes.
• 1:28:14
  They, they learn on the job, right, because they never were
• 1:28:18
  as an assistant. They never were put in charge of
• 1:28:20
  equipment or put in charge of travel or put in charge of
• 1:28:23
  whatever, or they're never even let into the world of a head
• 1:28:26
  coach. You know, you know now better
• 1:28:28
  than than me, you know, head coach beyond, you know,
• 1:28:31
  budgeting, scheduling, recruiting, coaching.
• 1:28:35
  You might, you know, in some schools, head coaches are part
• 1:28:37
  of committees to hire the basketball coach or whatever, or
• 1:28:40
  you're, you have conference meetings, things like that.
• 1:28:44
  But you, you weren't assistant coach long enough to even learn
• 1:28:47
  those things. What was How many years were you
• 1:28:51
  the head coach at Assumption? Two, yeah.
• 1:28:53
  Two years as an assistant, 2 years as the head.
• 1:28:56
  So when you became the head coach, what was something again,
• 1:29:02
  I could just see your mind like you know, I think you said ADS
• 1:29:05
  name was Nick. After that phone call with Nick,
• 1:29:08
  I could just see like just 1000 things, you know, going on, both
• 1:29:13
  job related, professional related and personally those
• 1:29:16
  changes some things personal as well.
• 1:29:17
  So I can just see all the things going on.
• 1:29:19
  What did you think as you kind of, you know, as the week goes
• 1:29:23
  along and it kind of, you know, OK, now reality is here, this is
• 1:29:26
  this is the job. I'm going to go do it.
• 1:29:27
  What did you think? OK, I'm going to be the head
• 1:29:29
  coach. I am the head coach.
• 1:29:33
  This might be hard. I don't know.
• 1:29:35
  What did you think might be hard becoming the head coach?
• 1:29:38
  But when you got into it, you know, two years later, you look
• 1:29:41
  back and you're like, oh, that actually wasn't as hard as I I
• 1:29:43
  thought maybe something you were like, oh, I'm kind of concerned
• 1:29:45
  about creating a budget. I've never created a budget.
• 1:29:47
  But then you got into it and you're like, yeah, you know
• 1:29:49
  what? It's just numbers.
• 1:29:51
  What did you think was going to be hard and actually ended up
• 1:29:53
  being maybe a little, little easier than you thought?
• 1:29:58
  I would say like, like the office work has has never really
• 1:30:01
  been a problem for me. Like I don't mind busy work.
• 1:30:04
  So like I'll, you know, I'll do, I'll do the ordering.
• 1:30:07
  Like I honestly, even right now as a head coach, like I don't
• 1:30:10
  really have my assistants doing much outside of recruiting and
• 1:30:13
  coaching. So like I'll I'll try to handle
• 1:30:15
  like everything else. So you're you're one of those
• 1:30:18
  guys I just talked about you not doing very when I say you, I'm
• 1:30:21
  doing the whole body you, not you.
• 1:30:23
  But yeah, your assistant's going to be maybe going to be going to
• 1:30:26
  head coach one day and he's going to he or she's going to be
• 1:30:28
  in that change. I know, I know.
• 1:30:28
  And Trent? Didn't let me into any of this
• 1:30:30
  stuff. I thought about that.
• 1:30:32
  But I also very much, when you said that, though, I also very
• 1:30:34
  much under like I felt that too of like, hey, man, I want you to
• 1:30:39
  go have the best throwers or whatever, you know, recruit them
• 1:30:42
  and coach them. I'll take it's a support thing
• 1:30:45
  too. It's like, hey, I got this part,
• 1:30:46
  man, I'll burden this so that you can go do what we all got
• 1:30:49
  into coaching for, by the way, Coach, go coach and recruit.
• 1:30:52
  So I also get that side of it too.
• 1:30:54
  I'm being a little judgy when I say, man, what are you doing?
• 1:30:57
  You're not helping these guys and gals out at all.
• 1:30:58
  But I also understand that part. You know, from, from my
• 1:31:04
  perspective, like, I want to make sure that that like the
• 1:31:08
  other, you know, the assistant coaches are doing things like
• 1:31:10
  are, are kind of like working towards their strengths.
• 1:31:13
  So if their strength is in recruiting and, and, and
• 1:31:16
  coaching their kids and programming and, and that type
• 1:31:19
  of thing, like, we'll just go all in for that.
• 1:31:20
  And like I'll, I'll do the things that that not that I
• 1:31:24
  don't necessarily like love doing, but I'll kind of, I'll
• 1:31:26
  kind of take that stuff on the chin, but.
• 1:31:29
  That's a very good decathlon way of looking at it.
• 1:31:31
  You're like cuz you're like, hey, look, I don't like doing
• 1:31:34
  the mile. That might have been different
• 1:31:35
  for you, but I don't like doing the 15.
• 1:31:37
  But you know what? I'll do it.
• 1:31:38
  I got to do it because I got to get all 10 events in.
• 1:31:40
  So you're like, hey man, I'll do the paperwork.
• 1:31:42
  I know you don't like doing it. No one does.
• 1:31:44
  But that's my 10th event. I'll get it done.
• 1:31:46
  It's a very decathly way of of thinking of things.
• 1:31:48
  I like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:31:51
  But the, the thing something that was like that I wasn't
• 1:31:54
  quite sure of was just, was just how to like, and I'm, I'm not
• 1:31:59
  the demanding type of person. Like I'm not going to demand
• 1:32:01
  respect. But like, how do, how do I have
• 1:32:03
  these, all these like student athletes who are just maybe some
• 1:32:06
  of them are almost as old as I am?
• 1:32:08
  Like how do I have them like respect me in in this role as a
• 1:32:13
  coach and as someone who's gonna hopefully take care of them and
• 1:32:17
  kind of lead them in the right direction.
• 1:32:19
  And so that was something I wasn't really sure about even at
• 1:32:22
  that time cuz I had still been training as an assistant coach.
• 1:32:26
  I was kind of training with them.
• 1:32:27
  And so I was relating to them from an athlete standpoint.
• 1:32:32
  And, and, and it was, it was slowly like a slowly moving
• 1:32:36
  towards, you know, as from a coaching perspective too, but,
• 1:32:39
  or from a coaching standpoint, But like I was still kind of one
• 1:32:42
  of them and I wasn't hanging out with them or anything like that.
• 1:32:45
  But it was, you know, in practice, I, I still sort of
• 1:32:48
  felt like a student athlete. And so then then I had to really
• 1:32:51
  transition and, and, and as naturally as possible into this
• 1:32:56
  role of their leader. And so I wasn't sure how that
• 1:33:01
  was gonna work. And honestly, I never truly
• 1:33:06
  mindfully adjusted my thought process.
• 1:33:11
  I just kind of like let it naturally occur over the course
• 1:33:14
  of like that year and then, you know, in the following year.
• 1:33:17
  And I'm glad I did it that way because like I, I'm just like
• 1:33:22
  want to be genuine, you know, with, with who I am and, and,
• 1:33:27
  and it worked out just fine. So I'm glad I didn't put on the
• 1:33:32
  hard ass hat at some point and try to kick kids off the team
• 1:33:35
  for doing things that they shouldn't have been doing, but
• 1:33:38
  that I didn't really believe in anyways.
• 1:33:41
  I just kind of took it from my most genuine self and I think
• 1:33:46
  that worked out just fine. Yeah, that had been so, excuse
• 1:33:48
  me, so inauthentic. You know, I think I have to be
• 1:33:52
  this. I'm going to go do this role and
• 1:33:53
  say, well, that's not you. You are.
• 1:33:54
  Some people are, but that's not you.
• 1:33:56
  What are you doing? You were an 18 to 22 year old
• 1:33:59
  kid at one point. The kids are smart.
• 1:34:02
  They can tell who's faking, who's being themselves, who
• 1:34:06
  believes in what they're saying, who doesn't, who's saying
• 1:34:08
  because who's saying stuff? Because I think they're supposed
• 1:34:10
  to say that as the head coach or what not.
• 1:34:12
  So very smart, I think to be authentic and and not easy to do
• 1:34:16
  because again, we we feel pressure.
• 1:34:19
  I've mentioned this book a few times on the podcast.
• 1:34:21
  Have you ever read the book The twin thieves?
• 1:34:23
  Have you? Ever heard of that?
• 1:34:24
  Yeah. It's actually a football story,
• 1:34:26
  but the twin thieves are fear of rejection and fear of failure.
• 1:34:31
  And so a lot of times when we become, I shouldn't say a lot of
• 1:34:33
  times, there are times when we'll become head coaches where
• 1:34:36
  we get into new roles and we fear being judged or rejected.
• 1:34:40
  And so we portray what we think we're supposed to act or say or
• 1:34:44
  do in that role instead of being authentic to who we are as it
• 1:34:49
  relates to the strengths of that role that we're that we're in.
• 1:34:52
  So, so I love that you chose the hey, Emma, be myself.
• 1:34:56
  If, if they don't like it and judgment, well, sorry, that's
• 1:34:59
  who I am. And you know what, if I fail,
• 1:35:02
  fear failure, well, we'll have to figure it out and I'll have
• 1:35:05
  to get better somehow. We'll get educated and how I
• 1:35:08
  failed and so it doesn't happen again.
• 1:35:09
  So yeah, I like that. That's very good.
• 1:35:11
  So two years of an assumption. Sorry, pause.
• 1:35:16
  So one of the things, yeah, I talked about, I don't think we
• 1:35:19
  do as a body very well of our assistant coaches, you know,
• 1:35:23
  helping them become better. First time head coaches.
• 1:35:26
  We also as an administration in general don't do a very good job
• 1:35:31
  of when we promote someone to head coach for the first time.
• 1:35:34
  There's there's things that you have to do as a head coach that
• 1:35:38
  you don't have to do or get to do as an assistant coach.
• 1:35:41
  And one of those things is staff evaluations, meaning hiring,
• 1:35:46
  firing evaluations, things like that.
• 1:35:50
  You're not taught that at all. Almost like you're kind of not
• 1:35:52
  ever taught how to recruit either.
• 1:35:53
  By the way, we talked about that in the past where it's like,
• 1:35:56
  hey, go recruit. You're like, cool.
• 1:35:57
  I guess that means just be likable.
• 1:35:59
  I don't know. What does that actually mean?
• 1:36:01
  You know, so the same thing as a head coach, you know, you have
• 1:36:04
  to at some point in your career, you're going to have an open
• 1:36:08
  position and you're going to have to figure out, well, what
• 1:36:11
  is it? What does hiring look like?
• 1:36:12
  Should I just go hire someone that I know?
• 1:36:14
  And and so a friend of mine, what do I look for fit?
• 1:36:17
  What, what do I, what do I actually do here?
• 1:36:19
  So did you have any? OK, Nick, you're the head coach
• 1:36:23
  or Nick calls and tells you that coach.
• 1:36:26
  Did you have to do any of that in the in the two years that
• 1:36:28
  your assumptions hiring like yeah, how'd that go?
• 1:36:32
  Well. And when I say how'd it go, I'm
• 1:36:36
  sorry real quick. When I say how'd it go, I don't
• 1:36:38
  necessarily mean like, hey, did the person you hire do the
• 1:36:41
  things that you wanted them to do more of like, OK, how do I
• 1:36:44
  put a job? Like do I go talk to HR?
• 1:36:47
  Who do I talk to? OK, I got all these
• 1:36:49
  applications. How do I whittle them down?
• 1:36:51
  Like that's what I mean. How did the the blocking
• 1:36:53
  tackling part of of it? How did that go?
• 1:36:55
  Yeah. So, you know, so many jobs do go
• 1:36:58
  up online like fortunately like the head coaching job did not
• 1:37:02
  like Nick just offered me the job.
• 1:37:05
  Similarly, like I got so lucky with with my assistant coaches,
• 1:37:11
  that assumption one we had literally just hired and he was
• 1:37:16
  my teammate at Uri from Central Massachusetts.
• 1:37:19
  So that one worked out great. Like we had a very similar
• 1:37:23
  thought process. So like it was so smooth.
• 1:37:25
  You know him, him and I like he was like, you know, my first
• 1:37:28
  assistant at at that time. And then we were looking for a
• 1:37:33
  distance coach. I mean, like you said, like I, I
• 1:37:36
  do, I do consider myself to be a track and field coach.
• 1:37:38
  Like I enjoy all the events. I feel like I have a decent
• 1:37:42
  understanding of them and and all that.
• 1:37:44
  And so, but it was still like I felt like I should play to my
• 1:37:48
  strengths and my strengths were more like in the jumps, I would
• 1:37:51
  say. And so I continued coaching the
• 1:37:53
  jumps. I had my Sprint hurdle coach and
• 1:37:56
  then I was looking for a distance coach and a throws
• 1:37:58
  coach. And so distance coach ended up
• 1:38:01
  being a guy that was actually working in an assumption
• 1:38:05
  admissions for the first in his first year.
• 1:38:09
  And he was a stellar distance runner himself at Providence
• 1:38:12
  College, also from the area I lived down the street from his,
• 1:38:16
  from his parents. It was it was just kind of like
• 1:38:18
  one of those situations. And so he did an amazing job.
• 1:38:23
  My sprints coach did an amazing job, like the whole time that
• 1:38:26
  they were there. And then the 4th coach is the
• 1:38:29
  is, is another person that you know Lisa Wilson, who?
• 1:38:32
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So she was, she had just come
• 1:38:37
  home from California where she was doing some coaching and some
• 1:38:40
  training and and she didn't like really have like, like a future
• 1:38:48
  in mind. So she was kind of doing some
• 1:38:50
  coaching at her local high school where she had attended.
• 1:38:54
  And so I call her out of the blue and like when I like, I
• 1:39:01
  like cold. It was essentially a cold call
• 1:39:03
  because someone had said, hey, she's in the area.
• 1:39:04
  I was like, all right, I'll, I'll talk to her.
• 1:39:07
  It was the best like first conversation I've ever had with
• 1:39:10
  anybody. Like she is just so easy to talk
• 1:39:14
  to. And just, I was like 5 minutes
• 1:39:18
  into the conversation, I was like, so can you just like come
• 1:39:21
  and come and work with me? Like, can you just come and coat
• 1:39:23
  the throws? I can't pay you a ton.
• 1:39:25
  But like, I like, I just, I need you to be here.
• 1:39:28
  Like I desperately need you to be here.
• 1:39:30
  And so she, she was like, yeah, let's do it because she didn't
• 1:39:33
  really know what she was going to be doing either.
• 1:39:35
  So yeah, that was our group of four.
• 1:39:37
  And we had a great time after meats.
• 1:39:40
  We would go out afterwards as a group.
• 1:39:42
  And yeah, we're all young, obviously.
• 1:39:45
  And, you know, we had, we had this responsibility of, of
• 1:39:49
  coaching like, you know, however many kids, 70 kids or 80 kids or
• 1:39:53
  something like that. Actually maybe it was more.
• 1:39:55
  But yeah, we just took it and ran with it.
• 1:39:58
  And it it was for those couple years, it was just an amazing
• 1:40:01
  experience. Well, definitely.
• 1:40:05
  I love Lisa Wilson and what's she's married now?
• 1:40:08
  I still call her Lisa Wilson. Browning, Yeah.
• 1:40:10
  Browning, thank you very much for that, because I know she's
• 1:40:13
  listening. I'm sorry, Lisa, I did not
• 1:40:14
  remember your married name. I apologize.
• 1:40:16
  Please tell him I said I'm sorry.
• 1:40:17
  Don't beat me up. He's a Have you seen her
• 1:40:19
  husband? He's a beast.
• 1:40:20
  Bro, I mean, yeah, geez, I'm gonna know that guy.
• 1:40:24
  We were doing something together at Nike Outdoor National and I
• 1:40:27
  was like, hey Hulk, can you grab my boxes for me, please?
• 1:40:30
  And you know, he just picks him up.
• 1:40:31
  I'm. Like, thank you, buddy.
• 1:40:32
  You gotta call him Tay Tay. Tay Tay all right, I'll see he's
• 1:40:36
  he's so he's amazing. Love him and guilt podcast
• 1:40:39
  alone, by the way. So if you're interested in
• 1:40:40
  learning more about Lisa Wilson from MF athletics, check
• 1:40:43
  whatever app you're using right now.
• 1:40:44
  Just type in her name and it'll pop up.
• 1:40:47
  Type in Lisa Wilson because she was Wilson back then.
• 1:40:49
  So but amazing story and I love that you're part of her story
• 1:40:53
  and she's part of yours. All right, in the instance of
• 1:40:56
  time here, so two years of assumption, where do we go next
• 1:41:00
  and and why you were the head coach?
• 1:41:01
  Why did we leave Assumption? Yeah, so Rob calls me out of the
• 1:41:05
  blue and he's like, hey, Trent, I'm thinking about going to USM.
• 1:41:10
  And I'm like, oh, OK. Like I get it.
• 1:41:13
  Like your parents are up there and he was, the idea was to go
• 1:41:17
  and help them because, you know, just from medical stuff
• 1:41:20
  happening up there, he's like, he just wanted to be closer.
• 1:41:24
  And so yeah, he's, he said he's thinking about it.
• 1:41:27
  And then and then at the end of the conversation in, in my mind
• 1:41:31
  was just, I don't know, maybe I was distracted or something.
• 1:41:33
  And I was like, OK. And then at the end he was like,
• 1:41:36
  well, what does that mean for you?
• 1:41:37
  I was like. What do you mean?
• 1:41:39
  Yeah. He's like, he's like, well,
• 1:41:40
  would you want to coach a URII? Was like, oh.
• 1:41:43
  Oh, you didn't even like catch on that that's what he.
• 1:41:45
  No, no, I wasn't thinking in those terms.
• 1:41:47
  I sure, sure, Michael. Like at Assumption, like things
• 1:41:49
  were going well. Like we were, you know, like,
• 1:41:52
  you know, things were going really, really well.
• 1:41:54
  So I was thinking I was going to be at assumption for a long
• 1:41:58
  time. You know, I I'm a loyalty guy.
• 1:42:00
  So like I, you know, once I start something, I'm probably
• 1:42:02
  going to try to finish it, do it like do as much as I can to
• 1:42:05
  finish that that project or task.
• 1:42:08
  And so, yeah, they, he calls me, we hang up and I talk to my
• 1:42:13
  wife. I'm like, and she's like, you
• 1:42:15
  should do it. You should go back to Uri.
• 1:42:17
  And she's from town. She was on the track team here.
• 1:42:19
  That's how we met. So she's from Kingston, RI,
• 1:42:22
  She's from South Kingstown, RI, where where Uri is.
• 1:42:26
  And so this would be an opportunity for her to move
• 1:42:29
  closer to home, right? And so, you know, I think about
• 1:42:33
  it more and more and then, you know, at some point, probably in
• 1:42:36
  the, the day after I, I talked to Robin, I was like, actually,
• 1:42:38
  I think I, I think I might be interested.
• 1:42:40
  And he tells Cope. And so Cope gives me a call one
• 1:42:44
  day. He's like Trent, like we, if
• 1:42:47
  you're interested, like we'd like to have you, we'd like to
• 1:42:49
  have you down here. And so again, like I get I get
• 1:42:52
  into this. I have still have never written
• 1:42:54
  like a like a. You know what I mean?
• 1:42:56
  I've never applied. I've never truly applied to a
• 1:42:59
  place. I just keep moving on, right?
• 1:43:04
  And so luckily enough, like, yeah, I cope.
• 1:43:06
  Cope was willing to have me on. So I basically just took over
• 1:43:08
  for Rob. And so first year was that, you
• 1:43:12
  know, when COVID struck, we had just won the indoor
• 1:43:15
  championship. And then, you know, right at the
• 1:43:18
  end, you know, a week later, like the world shuts down.
• 1:43:20
  World shuts down, Yeah. And and then we kind of pick it
• 1:43:24
  back up sort of in 20 fall of 2020.
• 1:43:28
  We don't have an indoor championship, but then we win
• 1:43:29
  the outdoor championship. And so like things are going
• 1:43:32
  well here too. And then at the end of that
• 1:43:35
  outdoor championship, cope, he brings a staff together.
• 1:43:39
  He's like, he's like, I'm retiring.
• 1:43:41
  I'm like, oh wow. And so then again, like the
• 1:43:44
  wheels in my head just start spinning and spinning and
• 1:43:47
  spinning and. So before you get to that next
• 1:43:50
  step, I'm always curious. I'm glad there was time between
• 1:43:53
  your undergrad and coming back because like you talked about,
• 1:43:57
  you brought up a great point about when you went from
• 1:43:59
  assistant coach and assumption to head coach.
• 1:44:01
  And because of your age and stage, you know, you've been
• 1:44:03
  working out with them. You're like, I kind of felt, I
• 1:44:06
  don't know if I don't know if you necessarily said I've kind
• 1:44:08
  of felt more of an athlete, but you certainly said you felt like
• 1:44:10
  an athlete versus just, you know, the assistant coach.
• 1:44:14
  I think, and I'm pretty sure I'm, this is a definitive
• 1:44:18
  statement for me. I think that if to be a GA that
• 1:44:22
  you should not be allowed to be a GA at the same school that,
• 1:44:25
  that you were an undergrad because I, I just don't, you
• 1:44:28
  know, I was a college kid. I don't see how on Friday you
• 1:44:32
  can be homeboys playing your Xbox and doing the things that
• 1:44:34
  we do as college kids because you're a teammate.
• 1:44:37
  And then on Monday, your coach and you know, there's a
• 1:44:41
  separation there, as you know, you know, between coach and
• 1:44:44
  athlete. I don't know how you go from
• 1:44:46
  being boys to being coach, but you used to kick it with them,
• 1:44:49
  you know, do the things, do the things that you now tell them
• 1:44:51
  not to do, right. So I love that you had that,
• 1:44:53
  that separation. But something that you that
• 1:44:55
  still happens here with you that we've seen in the past.
• 1:44:58
  I'm curious. And I know Cope wasn't this, you
• 1:45:00
  know, Rob was more of your coach, but you know, Cope was
• 1:45:02
  the head coach. He still has influence,
• 1:45:05
  especially a guy like Cope has influence over the team.
• 1:45:08
  What's it like? What was it like going from
• 1:45:11
  athlete Trent to with Coach Cope to like, oh, I'm now I'm staff.
• 1:45:17
  You know, we're not we're not here necessarily because he's
• 1:45:19
  the head coach, but you're certainly not here.
• 1:45:21
  Coach and athlete you're you're on the same staff.
• 1:45:23
  How was that going? That relationship change from
• 1:45:26
  coach Cope, Mike, my coach to oh, coach Cope.
• 1:45:29
  My I would say Pierre, but you know, on the same staff but my
• 1:45:32
  boss. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 1:45:36
  Obviously he's however much older than me, 50 years older
• 1:45:39
  than me or something like that. Like he he, but the our
• 1:45:42
  relationship definitely changed. You know, like he, he saw what
• 1:45:47
  we did at assumption. Like I I think he respected me
• 1:45:49
  from like a a success standpoint for sure.
• 1:45:53
  And, and he he was, he was a hard ass coach.
• 1:46:00
  Like we, you know, there was the stories like the stories from
• 1:46:02
  the athletes and the alumni Like you can still anytime I get
• 1:46:05
  together with guys, you know, my years or before, like they would
• 1:46:10
  always be the cope stories. Everybody's got a cope story.
• 1:46:12
  And, and, and so like that was that was kind of like my only
• 1:46:18
  like my only knowledge of him until I became his assistant
• 1:46:22
  coach. And that's when things really
• 1:46:24
  change. And like, I just realized how
• 1:46:27
  nice of a man he was. And like, I knew he, he didn't
• 1:46:30
  have kids. Like he, you know, he had a wife
• 1:46:32
  and he lived close to campus. And but like his, this thing was
• 1:46:36
  his, his life. Like really realistically, this
• 1:46:39
  whole thing was his life. So like we were all his kids.
• 1:46:42
  Like when, you know, when we were, when we were student
• 1:46:44
  athletes for him. And so, you know, when I became
• 1:46:47
  his assistant, like things definitely changed a lot.
• 1:46:50
  I just realized like, he wasn't the exact guy that we knew him
• 1:46:54
  to be, you know, like when he's kind of like off camera, he's
• 1:46:57
  just the nicest man and just and just wants the best for
• 1:47:00
  everybody, you know. And so that's kind of what I
• 1:47:03
  realized about him. And he definitely had a way
• 1:47:06
  about him in the office, like his old school mentality kind of
• 1:47:09
  stuck, stuck through. Like we were doing things like a
• 1:47:11
  lot differently at Assumption. And it's good that I had kind of
• 1:47:14
  like the both, you know, I could see things from like multiple
• 1:47:17
  ways. And so, yeah, cope, you know,
• 1:47:20
  certainly grateful he got us through COVID because that was
• 1:47:24
  that was a struggle like as, as it was for probably every school
• 1:47:27
  across the country, just like with all our all, all of our
• 1:47:30
  limitations and everything like that.
• 1:47:32
  So, but he stuck it out and forever, forever grateful for,
• 1:47:36
  you know, everything he's done. Just giving me the opportunity
• 1:47:38
  to come back, which at the time seemed like a parallel move kind
• 1:47:43
  of I'd say, you know, from being a head coach to being an
• 1:47:46
  assistant again. But I was actually being paid a
• 1:47:49
  little bit more. And, you know, there's less
• 1:47:52
  responsibility, but certainly more, you know, an opportunity
• 1:47:55
  eventually to like, move, move up, right?
• 1:47:59
  How you doing on time? We're we're near the end of.
• 1:48:01
  Yeah. OK, so Cope announces his
• 1:48:06
  retirement, which isn't you know, it's on one hand for a guy
• 1:48:09
  who coaches that long when that when they actually announced
• 1:48:11
  their retirement, on one hand it's not a surprise because it's
• 1:48:14
  like, well, you know, we don't live forever.
• 1:48:16
  We don't work forever. But on the other hand, it's
• 1:48:17
  like, yeah, but you know, I could have seen him retiring 10
• 1:48:19
  years ago and he didn't. So I could see him go in another
• 1:48:21
  year. So there's still a little bit of
• 1:48:23
  a surprise when they actually announced their retirement.
• 1:48:26
  Did you have automatic thoughts of like, okay, I'm going to
• 1:48:31
  become the head coach or I want to become the head coach?
• 1:48:33
  What was that process? I wasn't sure I was part of,
• 1:48:37
  part of me was like shit, like I don't know if I've been doing
• 1:48:40
  this long enough. Like, I just, I don't know if, I
• 1:48:43
  don't know if they're going to trust me, like the, the
• 1:48:45
  administration, I'm not sure what Cope's even going to say,
• 1:48:48
  like if he's going to give a recommendation or if they would
• 1:48:51
  consider a recommendation from him.
• 1:48:54
  I think Cope knew though, that it, it was a, it was a safe bet
• 1:48:57
  that like things wouldn't change, like, or they wouldn't
• 1:49:00
  change drastically if I took over.
• 1:49:03
  And I think that at the end of the day, that's how the
• 1:49:06
  administration felt too. Like things were going pretty
• 1:49:08
  well. We were winning like we didn't
• 1:49:11
  have like a lot of problems happening, like our, you know,
• 1:49:14
  team GPA was in a good place. Like things were generally like
• 1:49:18
  going well with our program. Like we weren't the one that
• 1:49:20
  they were, that they were concerned about, that's for
• 1:49:23
  sure. And so but they did put me
• 1:49:26
  through the ringer, like I had to do everything that everyone
• 1:49:29
  else had to do. And so, you know, from the, for
• 1:49:32
  the other applicants, like in this, again, this was my first
• 1:49:34
  time, like I had never, I had never had to go through this
• 1:49:37
  process, you know, like my very first job, Stacy was like, so
• 1:49:41
  you know, after 1/2 hour, she's like, so when can you start?
• 1:49:44
  And I was like, all right, you know, And so in this this time,
• 1:49:47
  I'm like, I had to, you know, do everything.
• 1:49:49
  And, and I, and, and that process was, was actually pretty
• 1:49:54
  stressful because I, I just felt like I the expectation was that
• 1:50:00
  was that I was like this perfect candidate.
• 1:50:01
  And like I, I just didn't know how to be like a perfect
• 1:50:04
  candidate. And, and, you know, throughout
• 1:50:06
  that process. So it was, it was tough, yeah.
• 1:50:09
  Do do you I I that that I appreciate that.
• 1:50:12
  That makes a lot of sense because, you know, you're right
• 1:50:14
  on on paper. Alum has head coaching
• 1:50:18
  experience, has had success, you know, Oh, by the way, is in the
• 1:50:23
  program now as an assistant coach.
• 1:50:24
  So if you're happy with the program, you have to give this
• 1:50:28
  guy some credit for that. He's a part of that.
• 1:50:29
  He's part of the GPA and the, you know, minimal bad things
• 1:50:37
  happening. It'll be that word.
• 1:50:39
  There's a word there. I'm so stupid.
• 1:50:43
  So things like so yeah, you're right on paper.
• 1:50:45
  It's like, oh, it's a slam dunk, but it's like, Oh, well,
• 1:50:49
  perfect, perfect is unattainable.
• 1:50:50
  How in the world do I convey these things, you know, that I
• 1:50:53
  want to convey be my authentic self during the during the
• 1:50:55
  process. Did did you It's again, it's
• 1:50:58
  always interesting you have these, you know, cope is a wrong
• 1:51:03
  word here. Outstretched figure.
• 1:51:06
  What I mean by that is, you know, his fingerprint.
• 1:51:08
  You talk about putting a fingerprint on a program.
• 1:51:10
  He doesn't have his fingerprint on the program.
• 1:51:12
  He has his whole palm. I mean his DNA.
• 1:51:14
  He's been there for so long. He built the program and had
• 1:51:19
  success. So it's not like you can say,
• 1:51:21
  oh, I'm going to do everything 180 from what Coke did because
• 1:51:25
  we're going to go from 8th place to 1st place like well you're
• 1:51:27
  already in first place. You're winning championships.
• 1:51:30
  How much did you when we interview?
• 1:51:36
  Interviewing is very interesting to me.
• 1:51:37
  I've interviewed hundreds of people throughout my 20 years
• 1:51:40
  here at Gil and I've studied interviewing.
• 1:51:43
  When we interview, whether it's for a coaching job or a sector
• 1:51:47
  job like like ours, it's this game, it's this, it's this play
• 1:51:52
  that you're putting on as the interviewer, the administration
• 1:51:56
  in in your case, there's a little bit of like, well, we
• 1:51:59
  want to, it's a little different because you know everything,
• 1:52:02
  you're there. So you know, all the warts and
• 1:52:04
  all, if you will, but when a new candidate comes in, it's like,
• 1:52:06
  well, we want to portray that we're a great institution and
• 1:52:08
  that would, you know, you'd be lucky to work here kind of
• 1:52:11
  thing, right? So you, you playing your part
• 1:52:13
  when you know, hey, it's not perfect here.
• 1:52:14
  No, no one's perfect. The candidate in, in this case,
• 1:52:18
  even you, even though you were there, you're, you're, you're
• 1:52:21
  thinking like, what do they want?
• 1:52:22
  So I better be that. I better portray that.
• 1:52:25
  So it's like, it's like this weird.
• 1:52:27
  Like we actually most times don't actually be ourselves,
• 1:52:30
  both interviewer and interviewee during the process because we're
• 1:52:33
  we're playing and then we get the job and you know, you can't
• 1:52:36
  fake the funk for too long. You end up being who you are.
• 1:52:39
  And then people like what? Wait a minute, this is the
• 1:52:41
  person who interviewed. Like, what the heck, right.
• 1:52:43
  And so where I'm getting at here with with you trend is how much
• 1:52:47
  did you during the interview process, you got a lot of the
• 1:52:50
  pressures that you mentioned about, you know, the the perfect
• 1:52:52
  candidate and all those kind of stuff.
• 1:52:53
  How much of it was like, OK, there's things cope did that I
• 1:52:57
  respect, but that would not be how I would do.
• 1:53:00
  I'm going to do do it differently, but gosh, it's hard
• 1:53:04
  to tell the administration that I'm going to do a lot of things
• 1:53:06
  differently because things were going really well.
• 1:53:09
  You know, what are you going to do?
• 1:53:10
  You're going to tell them you're going to win the NCAA's.
• 1:53:11
  No offense, but you know there's only probably about 5 schools in
• 1:53:14
  this country that are going to win NCAA's and it's only getting
• 1:53:16
  worse the way it's being set up. So how did you balance that?
• 1:53:22
  I want to put my fingerprint on it, but boy, the fingerprint we
• 1:53:25
  have right now is pretty good. I get it guys.
• 1:53:27
  How did you handle that? Does that make sense?
• 1:53:30
  I I might have like really awkward.
• 1:53:31
  No, I, I, I, I do understand what you're saying.
• 1:53:34
  I honestly like my, my initial reaction, you know, when they
• 1:53:40
  were asking these questions was just to say like things are
• 1:53:43
  going well. Like I wanted.
• 1:53:44
  I, I want to not make a lot of changes.
• 1:53:46
  But then, but then they'd come back and be like, well, like,
• 1:53:51
  why are things going well? You know, because of the way you
• 1:53:55
  were doing it before. And, and, and so it was just
• 1:53:57
  hard for me to like, I, I just, I just felt like I had to be
• 1:54:00
  someone else during the recruiting process.
• 1:54:02
  And they all knew who I was already.
• 1:54:04
  Like, I had been around here as a student athlete for five years
• 1:54:08
  and then I had been assistant coaching for two years.
• 1:54:10
  I've, I've been a part of the program for seven years already.
• 1:54:12
  So it's like they're asking me questions that they already know
• 1:54:15
  the answer to, you know? So it was just, it was like I
• 1:54:18
  didn't enjoy the. Process.
• 1:54:20
  I can see that that's where I'm kind of getting at.
• 1:54:22
  Like I could see someone listening right now going, oh,
• 1:54:25
  how lucky is Trent? What a slam dunk.
• 1:54:28
  He could have just walked in, gave everybody coffees and said,
• 1:54:31
  well, what are we going to do on Monday, boys?
• 1:54:33
  Because I know I'm getting a job and you know what, Lucky.
• 1:54:35
  And it's like, no, this is actually, there's complexity to
• 1:54:38
  this. Yeah, and it was my first time
• 1:54:40
  ever going through it. So like, I don't know, it just
• 1:54:44
  felt awkward like every almost every part of it felt really,
• 1:54:47
  really awkward. Like I was literally like the
• 1:54:49
  first, you know, the 1st and they'll do like the first round
• 1:54:52
  and like they'll, they'll chop it down to like however many
• 1:54:54
  three, you know, 3 to bring back on campus.
• 1:54:56
  And even the first one I was doing like a Zoom interview and
• 1:54:59
  I'm like I'm. Because they're all zoom, you
• 1:55:01
  want to keep them the same. You know what I mean?
• 1:55:03
  Like I'm I'm like 3 Doors Down. Like it just, it just felt like
• 1:55:07
  so. You hang up the Zoom and then go
• 1:55:10
  down the hall because you need to talk to them about some
• 1:55:12
  paperwork you got to do. Yeah, yeah, I completely get it,
• 1:55:14
  man. That's what I'm saying.
• 1:55:16
  I'm trying to make sure people understand like, like this was
• 1:55:18
  actually a stressful ordeal. Yeah, very stressful.
• 1:55:22
  And not just a oh, slam dunk, they were already changing the
• 1:55:25
  name plate. You know, this is awkward's a
• 1:55:28
  good word. This is difficult to navigate.
• 1:55:31
  I can see this, absolutely. So you go through first round,
• 1:55:34
  go through second round and well, and you know, spoiler
• 1:55:37
  alert, they offer you the job. Yeah, second round is better to
• 1:55:40
  be honest. Like I, I got, I got used to
• 1:55:41
  like the questions that they were answering me and I I did
• 1:55:43
  some more studying. I just, I was more prepared for
• 1:55:46
  like Round 2. And I honestly, like I did so
• 1:55:48
  poorly in round one that I'm like, Oh my God, I did, I just
• 1:55:50
  like did something bad. Just have it, just blow it, ruin
• 1:55:53
  my entire, you know, am I gonna even be here because it's as a
• 1:55:56
  new head coach even gonna keep me on?
• 1:55:58
  Like, I have no idea. Here's the here's the good news.
• 1:56:01
  They were interviewing you to be a head track coach, not to be a
• 1:56:04
  professional interviewer. So, you know, you probably have
• 1:56:07
  a pretty good administration there kind of get in the sense.
• 1:56:09
  So there's a little bit of grace of like, OK, guys, think about
• 1:56:12
  him too. You know, they had to have these
• 1:56:14
  same thoughts like, hey, here's this guy.
• 1:56:15
  Copeland's been around forever guys, but we want to give
• 1:56:18
  autonomy to our head coach too, that hey, we want you to.
• 1:56:21
  It's almost like what Nick said. Hey, it's your program.
• 1:56:25
  But we also know we have something good too.
• 1:56:26
  So I don't think they would have been happy with someone that
• 1:56:29
  would have came in and said I'm gonna throw it all out.
• 1:56:32
  Right, right. We got a good thing here guys.
• 1:56:35
  We need enhancement, not complete redo.
• 1:56:38
  So yeah, very, I can see that being very stressful.
• 1:56:42
  Absolutely. So what was it like when they
• 1:56:45
  finally like, how did they do it?
• 1:56:46
  Did they, did they call you? Did they call you to the office?
• 1:56:49
  Did they walk into your office? How'd they actually say hey man,
• 1:56:52
  we'd like? To like, I don't remember.
• 1:56:54
  I don't even remember how I found out that I officially got
• 1:56:56
  the job. I I think, I think yeah, the RAD
• 1:57:00
  Thor, he was an awesome. Guy too.
• 1:57:03
  I'm sorry we've. Been here for so long.
• 1:57:05
  Did you know I, we, we, Mike, we would have named one of our kids
• 1:57:08
  Thor. I'm telling.
• 1:57:08
  You that is amazing yes Oh my God, I was like they needed.
• 1:57:15
  Yeah. Dude, y'all got it going on with
• 1:57:18
  the names up there right? Holy cow, love that shout out to
• 1:57:22
  Thor. You know I I thought what before
• 1:57:25
  I got met my wife and everything and I was thinking about kids.
• 1:57:27
  I was like I'm, I was, I think I was joking.
• 1:57:29
  Obviously I was joking because I didn't do this.
• 1:57:31
  But I said I would name my kid Thor and then people that's like
• 1:57:34
  why? And I was like, no one beats up
• 1:57:36
  a kid named Thor, even if he's like a little bit wimpy.
• 1:57:38
  It's kind of like the dude's name is Thor.
• 1:57:39
  Let's maybe not mess with him, you know?
• 1:57:41
  So I I've always kind of liked the name Thor.
• 1:57:44
  So that's pretty cool. OK.
• 1:57:46
  Somehow magically you become the head coach.
• 1:57:48
  They, you don't even know that. They don't even tell you.
• 1:57:50
  You just assume the role and you keep going.
• 1:57:52
  How's that been, man? That it's, you know, you care.
• 1:57:55
  You cared a lot about assumption.
• 1:57:57
  No doubt. You care more about your alma
• 1:58:00
  mater. At least hopefully you do.
• 1:58:03
  You, you, you look at a kid that's on your team and you're
• 1:58:05
  like, dude, that was me. You know, 10 years ago, little
• 1:58:08
  Joey, there was little Trent scared, not knowing where to go
• 1:58:11
  to class, not knowing what's going to happen because I got
• 1:58:13
  injured and where he's going to go home and who knows what's
• 1:58:15
  going to happen. How's it been being the head
• 1:58:18
  coach of your alma mater so far? I mean dream come true.
• 1:58:23
  Like to be honest, it just is. At what point was I like hoping
• 1:58:28
  that this would happen? Like to be honest, like I
• 1:58:30
  thought what would happen was the was Cope would retire, Rob
• 1:58:35
  would become the head coach and then I would be at assumption
• 1:58:39
  for 10 or 12 years. Then the women's staff would
• 1:58:42
  retire and then I would go for that job.
• 1:58:45
  That's what I thought would always happen.
• 1:58:47
  You couldn't even conceive Rob leaving.
• 1:58:48
  Like you didn't even because I thought you were going to say,
• 1:58:50
  well, then Rob would leave and I'd take his job.
• 1:58:51
  You weren't even conceiving that.
• 1:58:53
  Right. No, I that that really wasn't.
• 1:58:55
  I didn't think that. Yeah, this happened way faster
• 1:58:58
  than I could have ever. Imagined.
• 1:58:59
  Sure. Sure, sure.
• 1:59:00
  And so I'm, I'm just super grateful and appreciative for
• 1:59:03
  all the people that have like helped me get to this point.
• 1:59:06
  And, you know, I feel like at the end of the day, like I, I
• 1:59:10
  did earn it though, you know, it's.
• 1:59:11
  I evident. I was an alumni.
• 1:59:14
  I did the helps, like all this stuff helps, like just, you
• 1:59:16
  know, my relationship with the people around here helps.
• 1:59:18
  And but I felt like, and, and I hope that they felt like they
• 1:59:24
  were getting someone that was going to continue the legacy of
• 1:59:27
  the program, you know, and coped set it up so well.
• 1:59:30
  Like it was I I'm not going to say it was like a slam dunk
• 1:59:33
  because you know, although logistically we've kept things
• 1:59:36
  relatively the same, same practice time, same basic meet
• 1:59:39
  schedule, like, you know, we do a lot of the same types of trips
• 1:59:42
  and stuff like that. You know, from a programming
• 1:59:45
  perspective, we've brought, we've brought more of like a
• 1:59:47
  modern style. We've obviously as younger
• 1:59:50
  coaches, we're more relatable. And so like the program has has
• 1:59:54
  taken off like in the last four years, just that, I mean, track
• 1:59:58
  trackflation is a thing. Like we all know that just the
• 2:00:01
  level of track is is getting better, but I think we're still.
• 2:00:04
  Ahead of that curve even. And, And so, yeah, things have
• 2:00:09
  just gone very well. I mean, we've won.
• 2:00:12
  This is Year 5 for me as a head coach and we've won seven of
• 2:00:16
  eight conference titles since, you know, since I've been here
• 2:00:19
  with my, with my new staff. Bro, and you're in a good
• 2:00:22
  conference. This ain't like you went in the
• 2:00:24
  East Coast half state championships here, you know you
• 2:00:28
  they 10 brother. That's some good teams, some
• 2:00:30
  good coaches there. Yeah, it's definitely some some,
• 2:00:33
  you know some, some tough competition, but we have good
• 2:00:37
  resources here as God are better than most of the schools in our
• 2:00:40
  conference. So you know, from a track and
• 2:00:42
  field perspective like we should be contending on a year to year
• 2:00:47
  basis and then even in cross country like it's, it's not an
• 2:00:52
  unwinnable conference, you know, although it's, it's a much
• 2:00:55
  harder thing to do when you're trying to split kind of cross
• 2:00:59
  and track. Yeah, a lot of times I'll ask
• 2:01:01
  the question about what are you doing for coaching education.
• 2:01:06
  You know, basically the question is, you know, what are you doing
• 2:01:08
  to improve as a coach? I want to ask you a little bit
• 2:01:10
  different. What are you doing to become a
• 2:01:14
  better head coach? When you think about, you know,
• 2:01:16
  your five years in at Rhode Island, a couple years of
• 2:01:20
  assumption, you know people, you're whether you want to be or
• 2:01:24
  not to be, you are a leader. You're the head coach of the
• 2:01:26
  program. So you have a assistant coaches
• 2:01:28
  that look to you. You have athletes that look to
• 2:01:30
  you have administration that looks to you.
• 2:01:32
  What, what are you doing for professional development?
• 2:01:36
  How do you how do you become not a better jumps coach?
• 2:01:40
  How do you become a better head coach of a of a program?
• 2:01:45
  I think for, for the head coach, it has to be someone that is
• 2:01:50
  like detail oriented. I mean, you just have to, you
• 2:01:53
  have to do all the behind the scenes work that like nobody is
• 2:01:55
  really, nobody's really checking up on.
• 2:01:58
  But if you do miss something, it's like, like, that's good.
• 2:02:02
  That could come back to bite you.
• 2:02:03
  And, and I've, there's been a lot of plenty of situations in
• 2:02:06
  the past as I'm sure this happens to everybody where like
• 2:02:09
  an e-mail gets missed or, or you know, you're just late to get a
• 2:02:13
  project done or something like that.
• 2:02:14
  And like there actually is like a negative effect to that, like,
• 2:02:19
  you know, some, you know, someone misses something And,
• 2:02:22
  and honestly, at the end of the day, that's just points on
• 2:02:24
  paper. It just ends up being points,
• 2:02:26
  you know, so it's all, it's all calculated.
• 2:02:28
  So I'm, I've just really trying to make it a point to like
• 2:02:31
  button everything up and just be more organized as a coach.
• 2:02:36
  I think the first couple things that we did, first couple things
• 2:02:39
  I would, I did was like just make sure the staff was in good
• 2:02:41
  order. And so I need an assistant coach
• 2:02:44
  and I got someone that that was highly recommended by many
• 2:02:48
  coaches in this area. His name is Brian Doyle and he
• 2:02:51
  coaches from from like the long line of Doyle's in in Rhode
• 2:02:55
  Island. I was wondering, yeah, is that
• 2:02:57
  right? Yeah, yeah, his, his dad was
• 2:02:59
  Bobby Doyle, who is the very famous distance runner in, in
• 2:03:02
  the state for like, you know, the best long distance runner
• 2:03:05
  for decade, literally decades. And he was another PC guy Brian
• 2:03:09
  was. And so he, he got some coaching
• 2:03:12
  went down with with Rennie Waldron, who you might know of
• 2:03:16
  when he was at Davidson. Rennie was Brian's coach when
• 2:03:20
  Brian was at Northeastern when he started school.
• 2:03:22
  So there was a big connection there.
• 2:03:24
  Brian started doing sprints coaching, even though he was a
• 2:03:26
  distance guy for Rennie. And so Brian came here with a
• 2:03:30
  background as a distance runner, but also as a with a coaching
• 2:03:33
  background in sprints and Cope used to coach sprints all the
• 2:03:37
  way through distance. So there's very few, yeah,
• 2:03:41
  there's very few people that kind of cover that full gap.
• 2:03:44
  And Brian was like kind of the perfect candidate and one back
• 2:03:48
  to Rhode Island. So it was just a no brainer.
• 2:03:51
  It was like I I interviewed one person and I was like, there's
• 2:03:54
  no possible way anybody else could be better than this.
• 2:03:57
  Are you a reader, a podcast listener, a video, any any
• 2:04:03
  leadership stuff that you learn from organizational?
• 2:04:06
  Just trying to think like sometimes for the podcast, not
• 2:04:10
  sometimes there's kind of two goals.
• 2:04:12
  I should have told you this before we hit record.
• 2:04:14
  One we talked about, you know, uplifting honor what you've
• 2:04:16
  done. You know, we're and we're doing
• 2:04:17
  that. It's an amazing career.
• 2:04:19
  It's great to show people the different avenues that you can
• 2:04:22
  take to to become where you are today.
• 2:04:25
  The other is, you know, we do have lots and lots of listeners.
• 2:04:27
  We have coaches who it's their first day coaching.
• 2:04:30
  We have coaches that cope that it's their 50th year coaching
• 2:04:33
  that listen. And so I like to extract value
• 2:04:35
  out of the the person to take advantage of the situation if I
• 2:04:38
  can. So I always try to figure out
• 2:04:40
  like book recommendations, podcasts, anything like that.
• 2:04:46
  Man. Noah's OK, by the way.
• 2:04:47
  That's all right. Yeah.
• 2:04:48
  Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, honestly, I've just
• 2:04:53
  tried to, and I said this earlier in the podcast, just
• 2:04:56
  stay true to myself. And honestly, as the years have
• 2:04:59
  gone on, the way I relate to athletes has just changed.
• 2:05:03
  Like I, I'm not their age anymore.
• 2:05:05
  So like I, it's like the respect level just happens.
• 2:05:08
  You know, it happens a little more naturally.
• 2:05:10
  I'd say like as the years go on, like I think people are less
• 2:05:14
  inclined to call me Trent or Coach Trent and more like
• 2:05:17
  wanting to call me Coach B or, or Coach Zell or something.
• 2:05:22
  And like I've never asked and asked anything from anybody in
• 2:05:26
  in those ways. But as I get older, it's just
• 2:05:28
  it's just kind of getting almost like easier.
• 2:05:30
  So I haven't tried to like push myself in any certain way or
• 2:05:34
  push others in any certain way. And I just just like my just the
• 2:05:40
  way I am, like genuinely and honestly I think has worked out
• 2:05:43
  really well for me so. So talk us through we we touched
• 2:05:47
  on this, hinted at this earlier. It used to be how I don't, I
• 2:05:52
  don't know if it was, I don't know if it was always like back
• 2:05:56
  in the day, was it always split programs?
• 2:05:58
  But I certainly know there were a lot more back in the day.
• 2:06:00
  And it seems like the trend is going towards combination.
• 2:06:03
  You guys still have a men's staff and a women's staff.
• 2:06:06
  I, I used to be, so I used to coach at Ball State University
• 2:06:08
  back in the day and we were split staff.
• 2:06:10
  So my head coach was Sue Parks. Jim Sprecher was on the other
• 2:06:14
  men's head coach. Both those guys, by the way, Sue
• 2:06:17
  Parks and Sprecher Gill podcast alums.
• 2:06:20
  If you want to learn more about them, find find their episodes
• 2:06:23
  here. And I know how we operated, but
• 2:06:27
  I've heard of others like if I should say that, but I know of
• 2:06:31
  others that cross coach. How do you guys do it at Rhode
• 2:06:34
  Island? Does the women staff coach all
• 2:06:36
  the women and no mixed? You know, the Sprint coach on
• 2:06:38
  the women's side isn't coaching the men's sprinters or do you
• 2:06:42
  commingle totally separate? How does it work there at Rhode
• 2:06:44
  Island? We've always been friendly, like
• 2:06:46
  I think the women's, the women's program began in like the 70s,
• 2:06:51
  like late 70s and. We've always that's actually an
• 2:06:55
  old women's program. You know what I mean by that?
• 2:06:57
  Like that. That's that's awesome.
• 2:06:59
  They were kind of a forerunners then.
• 2:07:00
  That's good. Yeah, our, our men's programs
• 2:07:02
  actually began in like I had like 19 O 5 or 19 O 6.
• 2:07:06
  It's it's been well over 100 years.
• 2:07:07
  Holy. So it took, yeah, it took a
• 2:07:09
  while, but yeah, the women's programs now like, you know,
• 2:07:11
  close to 50 years old, I would say.
• 2:07:13
  And we've always been friendly like this, Hey, there's plenty
• 2:07:16
  of mingling going on. Like my wife was on the team.
• 2:07:18
  And that's not, that's not like unique or anything like that.
• 2:07:22
  So we practice it at the same time because that's when we have
• 2:07:26
  the field house to our, you know, to ourselves.
• 2:07:27
  And it's recreation runs our field house.
• 2:07:30
  It's not a varsity facility. So, you know, we, we kind of,
• 2:07:34
  we, we kind of have to go by there.
• 2:07:36
  Yeah, you rent time and all that kind of stuff.
• 2:07:38
  Yeah. Mm, hmm, Yeah, that's, that's
• 2:07:39
  not unusual. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:07:41
  And so, but outside of that, yeah, they have their own
• 2:07:44
  coaching staff. We for the first time, we do
• 2:07:47
  have a coach and she's she coaches the pole vault.
• 2:07:50
  And as a jumps coach, like I do, I do enjoy coaching all the
• 2:07:53
  events. But if there's one event that
• 2:07:55
  like I can give up to somebody else because it takes just an
• 2:07:59
  incredible amount of time out of your day, it's a pole vault.
• 2:08:01
  So when you said? When you said you had a combo, I
• 2:08:04
  was like, I bet it's a pole vault.
• 2:08:06
  It just makes sense. Yeah.
• 2:08:07
  Yeah. So how do you do you guys, if
• 2:08:13
  you travel to the same meets, how do you coordinate that?
• 2:08:16
  Like does Trent do the travel and she does the and by the way,
• 2:08:20
  we're going to have her on the podcast as well.
• 2:08:22
  So we'll learn her side of it. So you're going to get a Fact
• 2:08:25
  Check. She's going to she's going to be
• 2:08:27
  if you're right or wrong, you know, so do you, how do you
• 2:08:30
  split up responsibilities? How do you how do you make a
• 2:08:32
  decision? She wants to go to this meeting.
• 2:08:34
  You're like, yeah, I don't really want to go to this
• 2:08:35
  meeting, things like that. How do you how do you
• 2:08:38
  cohabitate? Cuz while your separate program,
• 2:08:40
  I shouldn't have done air quotes here cuz it is two different
• 2:08:42
  sports. It is 6 different sports.
• 2:08:44
  How do you guys coordinate? We, we do go our separate ways,
• 2:08:50
  like with, with meet coordination.
• 2:08:53
  If we are going to the to the same meet, like we will try to
• 2:08:56
  save money and make it easier by by kind of sharing rides in, in
• 2:09:01
  certain cases, if it makes sense.
• 2:09:03
  It's like we'll take a bus and we'll take a few vans and, and
• 2:09:06
  you know, sometimes some of the girls are on our and this is, is
• 2:09:08
  new too. This is only within the like the
• 2:09:10
  last couple years. So we're, we're getting closer
• 2:09:13
  and closer to, to combining, I would say.
• 2:09:17
  But like there's, you know, there's, there's no guarantees.
• 2:09:20
  I mean, Lori, Lori and her husband John have been running
• 2:09:24
  that women's program since like the early 90s.
• 2:09:26
  So and, and you know, Cope had been here since the early 80s
• 2:09:30
  and like they had just never, they had never kind of gotten
• 2:09:34
  together to do these things. And so, but now we're, we're
• 2:09:37
  kind of getting closer. And I think administration would
• 2:09:40
  is certainly considering combining programs like at some
• 2:09:44
  point. I've seen all, all kinds and no
• 2:09:47
  one is right and no one is wrong here.
• 2:09:49
  So I've seen, you know, separate programs that, you know, the the
• 2:09:54
  guy who's officially the men's assistant coach, but also
• 2:09:56
  coaches all sprinters, women and men.
• 2:09:58
  And I've seen completely separate.
• 2:09:59
  I've seen adversarial as well. You know that that's probably
• 2:10:04
  not right, but I've seen all types, right.
• 2:10:06
  But, but it is interesting to me, one part that I don't like
• 2:10:12
  having the experience of it is you're limited.
• 2:10:14
  Well, at least back then, things have changed.
• 2:10:16
  You're limited to three coaches. So it's a little hard to span
• 2:10:19
  all the events with that and with a combined, you know, you
• 2:10:22
  have 6. And so it's a little easier to
• 2:10:25
  chop up your, your events. But, but, but we, we as track
• 2:10:33
  coaches and we as athletics do a terrible job of separating our
• 2:10:39
  sports. We, we are, we are track and
• 2:10:41
  field, which means we're men's cross country, women's cross
• 2:10:43
  country, men's indoor, women's outdoor.
• 2:10:45
  We forget that we are 6 sports and and I don't think any the
• 2:10:50
  majority of I'm sure there's somebody who does this, but in
• 2:10:53
  the majority I don't think like Rhode Island.
• 2:10:56
  Do you have tennis and golf at Rhode Island?
• 2:10:59
  Women's tennis and men's golf, Yeah.
• 2:11:03
  You have women's tennis, but not men's tennis.
• 2:11:06
  Correct. And you have men's golf but not
• 2:11:08
  women's golf. Yeah, you guys are weird.
• 2:11:10
  I love it. Other schools will have men's
• 2:11:13
  and women's tennis or men's and women's golf, and the majority
• 2:11:16
  of them have a men's tennis head coach and a women's tennis head
• 2:11:22
  coach. And I meant but in in track.
• 2:11:24
  Oh boy, it's very common. You, you're the head coach of
• 2:11:27
  all six. So I do kind of like this
• 2:11:30
  separate program to give like hey, you're responsible for the
• 2:11:34
  woman's program and you're responsible for the men's and
• 2:11:36
  those are separate sports. We don't say, hey, track is
• 2:11:39
  doing real well when the men win and the women get 8th.
• 2:11:42
  But we say, hey, we got a problem over here on this side.
• 2:11:44
  And by the way, I'm not saying that's what I actually don't
• 2:11:46
  know. I don't look up results.
• 2:11:47
  I don't care cuz I care about you as a person, not as your
• 2:11:49
  results, but, but I'm saying, you know, we, we, we can put
• 2:11:52
  attention to those words and actually have accountability.
• 2:11:54
  So I kind of like the idea of separate.
• 2:11:57
  I just, I just wish we had more coaches than, you know, I'd love
• 2:11:59
  for you to have six coaches on the men's side and her to have
• 2:12:01
  6. Great.
• 2:12:02
  Yeah. On the, on the women's side as
• 2:12:03
  well there. So how do you, so one of the
• 2:12:05
  things that we want to celebrate, you know what we
• 2:12:08
  believe healthy things grow. And right now, and if you're
• 2:12:12
  watching, you probably have seen Trent do this a couple times.
• 2:12:15
  He's looking over his shoulder, over his left shoulder.
• 2:12:17
  He's got a nice window, I can tell there and he's looking out
• 2:12:20
  into a new track and field facility that's going on there.
• 2:12:23
  So talk to us about that and one of the sub questions there.
• 2:12:29
  So I've done many, many, many, many facilities right from
• 2:12:33
  Oregon to Mohammed High School, right?
• 2:12:37
  It's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of questions have
• 2:12:40
  to be answered and solutions. How did, how do you, how do you
• 2:12:47
  guys, how are you guys coordinating with that?
• 2:12:49
  She's got her ideas, you got your ideas and you're not going
• 2:12:53
  to have a men's track facility and a women's track facility.
• 2:12:57
  We know that. How how is it going with the new
• 2:13:00
  facility? Because that's exciting, but
• 2:13:02
  also a ton of work and very nerve wracking, lot of stress as
• 2:13:05
  well. Yeah, Yeah.
• 2:13:07
  So I think it was 2021 when like Thor or AD was kind of looking
• 2:13:14
  into a project like this. And so he, he had hired a firm,
• 2:13:19
  CHA to, to help us out. And so they actually gave us a
• 2:13:26
  questionnaire. They gave a coaching staff a
• 2:13:28
  questionnaire. Cope wanted nothing to do with
• 2:13:29
  it. He was at that point he was
• 2:13:31
  probably like, you know what, this is not for me.
• 2:13:34
  So I worked on it with the woman's coaches.
• 2:13:37
  It was just this big questionnaire kind of covered
• 2:13:39
  all facets of, of a new facility and we handed it in and then we
• 2:13:45
  got some like some basic quotes and, and it ended up coming in
• 2:13:48
  like so expensive, like we couldn't possibly ever fundraise
• 2:13:51
  for, for that type of facility. So, but it was like a wish list,
• 2:13:54
  you know, it was like a true wish list.
• 2:13:55
  It was like everything that we would hope to want for a new
• 2:13:58
  outdoor facility, which we had a new one in 1977 or something
• 2:14:03
  like that. And it was never maintained.
• 2:14:05
  So it was, it was the last meet we had there was like 93 or
• 2:14:09
  something like that. So we weren't even hosting
• 2:14:11
  meets. It's been condemned since since
• 2:14:13
  like the like the mid 90s, like literally like guy like we
• 2:14:17
  weren't even allowed to be on it.
• 2:14:18
  It was, it was just in such rugged shape.
• 2:14:20
  Wow. So anyways, this has been in
• 2:14:23
  talks forever. Obviously, like new track, new
• 2:14:25
  track, new track, but it's all just money.
• 2:14:28
  Like how much is this thing going to cost?
• 2:14:29
  And then when we get the, you know, when we get the, the
• 2:14:32
  quotes, it just gets shut down. So when I first became the head
• 2:14:36
  coach, we had a new president that came in President Marc
• 2:14:39
  Prolange. And he was a, a big advocate of
• 2:14:43
  athletics and especially running because he's, he's just a
• 2:14:47
  distance guy. Like he'll go out 10 mile runs.
• 2:14:50
  He's like in his 60s or he might be 70 now.
• 2:14:53
  And his wife and they just they're, they're runners.
• 2:14:55
  So big fans. Like they would come out cross
• 2:14:57
  country pre season, I'd run with them.
• 2:14:59
  And it was, it was a great time. And so two years later, it just,
• 2:15:05
  I think he's taken, it's a heart that we don't have like a
• 2:15:07
  facility and he goes to the State House and lobbies for a
• 2:15:11
  huge grant, athletics grant. And he he secures like $65
• 2:15:16
  million. This was 2 summer, this was 2
• 2:15:19
  summers ago when this happened. And so it's paid for by, you
• 2:15:24
  know, the, the taxpayers of the state.
• 2:15:27
  And so we hadn't really needed a fundraise for it either.
• 2:15:30
  So actually what they did was they just took our questionnaire
• 2:15:33
  and they just forwarded it two years forward.
• 2:15:36
  And then we used the exact same design that we had developed.
• 2:15:40
  And so, yeah, the coaches designed this whole facility.
• 2:15:43
  That's awesome. Yeah.
• 2:15:45
  So we had our we have our handprint all over this thing.
• 2:15:48
  Holy cow, very lucky. I mean, that's maybe best case
• 2:15:54
  scenario. You know, I, one of my roles
• 2:15:56
  here is new facility development.
• 2:15:58
  And so it's not, I mean, not only is it not uncommon, it is
• 2:16:01
  very common in 2025. Hey, we're getting a new track.
• 2:16:05
  And the reality is, at least for our side, you know, the
• 2:16:08
  equipment side, 2030 is when we'll actually, you know, I
• 2:16:12
  worked on Virginia Beach and Louisville and Spokane for years
• 2:16:18
  before an actual PO was put in. So that's not uncommon because
• 2:16:23
  money, money is the issue, right at land.
• 2:16:25
  Land is expensive. It's kind of funny, you know, in
• 2:16:29
  the world we live in here with equipment, the equipment is
• 2:16:31
  actually this much of the entire project, all the other dirt
• 2:16:34
  moving and the track itself and you know, all the stuff that
• 2:16:38
  goes with it, that's way more expensive.
• 2:16:41
  So it's money. Money is always the issue.
• 2:16:43
  That's that's exactly right. So to have, you know, a
• 2:16:46
  president, what a what a great example of having an
• 2:16:50
  administration and a all the way up to the president support.
• 2:16:55
  You got to have their support or boy, life gets super hard, super
• 2:17:00
  hard. This.
• 2:17:00
  This could not have possibly happened without the president
• 2:17:03
  doing this. That's right.
• 2:17:05
  So that's awesome, man, I love that.
• 2:17:07
  That's so cool. So how as we start to wrap up
• 2:17:10
  here, what you look to the words of future, you know, the 2026
• 2:17:14
  season is right here in front of you.
• 2:17:15
  You got construction over your left shoulder.
• 2:17:18
  So you get to define what the future looks like.
• 2:17:20
  Is it five years, 10 years down the road?
• 2:17:21
  What's got you excited there at Rhode Island?
• 2:17:25
  Well, I think this is actually going to be like the most
• 2:17:27
  functional facility in New England.
• 2:17:30
  Like I, I'm barring none, honestly, and from even from a
• 2:17:34
  spectator's point of view, like we're not going to have
• 2:17:36
  grandstands and, and lights, at least not in like this initial,
• 2:17:40
  initial phase. But like we have, we'll have
• 2:17:43
  seating for 1000 and, and honestly, like everything is so
• 2:17:47
  close together. You can go on our Instagram page
• 2:17:50
  and I've kind of posted some updates on how things are going
• 2:17:53
  and I've posted the plans for the track and you can see for
• 2:17:55
  yourself how how this thing is designed.
• 2:17:58
  It's, it's cool again because the guy's done a lot of
• 2:18:00
  facilities. I I do like how you guys
• 2:18:02
  designed it, yeah. You can stand in one place like
• 2:18:04
  the South Bend of the track and you can watch the throwing
• 2:18:07
  events. You can watch the high jumpers,
• 2:18:09
  obviously, you can watch the kids running around the track.
• 2:18:11
  You can watch, you know, if we have a north to South wind, you
• 2:18:14
  can watch the pole vault and the long jump and triple jump all
• 2:18:17
  all coming your way. Like it's, it's going to be just
• 2:18:20
  one of those facilities that gives you a lot of options to.
• 2:18:22
  We have basically 2 of everything.
• 2:18:26
  You know, we've got 2 discus circles.
• 2:18:28
  The only thing we have one of is the hammer.
• 2:18:30
  And that's typical. Yeah, right.
• 2:18:32
  So but yeah, multiple shop with circles, multiple jump hits
• 2:18:36
  going each way, pole vault pits going, you know, four boxes, 2
• 2:18:40
  going each way. And you're doing a separate
• 2:18:42
  discus cage. So you know, to your point, a
• 2:18:44
  lot of times it's one hammer cage which also serves as your
• 2:18:46
  discus cage. So you're actually got to throw
• 2:18:49
  in long throw in circles there. So it's it's cool.
• 2:18:51
  I do like your design. You know, again, I've been
• 2:18:53
  involved in Oregon's design and, you know, Baylor's and and many
• 2:18:59
  in between. I do.
• 2:19:00
  It's a little, there's some uniqueness there.
• 2:19:02
  It, it actually, you know, I like how you said that it
• 2:19:05
  actually has, I can see a coach's eyesight into it, not
• 2:19:10
  just a designer, because I've seen some designer, you know,
• 2:19:13
  designer only that they think they know.
• 2:19:14
  Oh, it's 400 meters and I can do this.
• 2:19:17
  And you, you know, you get 35 inch lanes and things like that,
• 2:19:20
  you know, or 6 lanes and it's like, bro, you have no clue
• 2:19:23
  what's going on here. So I do love the input and I
• 2:19:26
  really dearly. This is something very
• 2:19:28
  passionate of mine, very much in love that they asked you guys
• 2:19:33
  your opinion. You know, when it comes to new
• 2:19:35
  facilities, this is the, the common way, all the design work
• 2:19:39
  and in ground stuff, so cages, ball boxes, stuff like that,
• 2:19:42
  sand pits gets done by a facility AD and architects and,
• 2:19:47
  and they never asked the coach anything that they'll, they'll
• 2:19:50
  come to the coach when it's time for the fun stuff, the hurdles
• 2:19:52
  and pits and things like that. And they never asked the guys
• 2:19:55
  and gals who are actually going to be standing on that track
• 2:19:57
  working every single day. Hey, is it, is it important
• 2:20:02
  which way the, the pole vault goes?
• 2:20:04
  Because a designer will be like, I just, I got room here, put the
• 2:20:06
  pole vault here is like, bro, you have no idea what our winds
• 2:20:08
  are like. That's important.
• 2:20:09
  For where you place your pole ball pit.
• 2:20:11
  So I do like that I can actually see a coach's input into that
• 2:20:16
  facility. I think it's going to be
• 2:20:18
  amazing. So so you guys will be back to
• 2:20:20
  host. You won't have it done this
• 2:20:21
  year. You're going to be back to
• 2:20:22
  hosting meets though in 27. Yeah, we'll host meets in 27.
• 2:20:26
  That's so cool. Will this be I know you said
• 2:20:29
  about 1000 grandstand and I don't know what the current I
• 2:20:32
  should because I interviewed a Rhode Island coach.
• 2:20:34
  Will this be a potential state meet, host site or?
• 2:20:38
  My God, we're gonna do as much as we can cuz we don't.
• 2:20:41
  The Maclefield House is a rec facility.
• 2:20:44
  This is gonna be a varsity facility.
• 2:20:45
  So we'll be able to control kind of what's coming in and we're
• 2:20:50
  absolutely looking forward to hosting high school invites and
• 2:20:53
  state championships and high school New England championships
• 2:20:56
  and obviously all the, you know, all the college championships
• 2:21:00
  that we can as well. And invites.
• 2:21:01
  So and yeah, like I said, it's functional.
• 2:21:04
  So it's 9948 inch wide lanes. It's an Olympic sized track.
• 2:21:09
  It's got 2 of everything. It's, you know, you can go, it's
• 2:21:12
  got four run outs, you know, in each corner of the track.
• 2:21:15
  So you can, you can run any way you want to run when, when
• 2:21:19
  dependent. So yeah, we, we tried to think
• 2:21:22
  of everything. I'm sure we'll still get
• 2:21:24
  something one or a couple things wrong, but for the most part, I
• 2:21:27
  think this this track will be able to do just about anything
• 2:21:29
  we want it to do. There is no perfect track.
• 2:21:32
  Again, I use Oregon as an example because, you know, 270
• 2:21:35
  something, $1,000,000 facility and it's a Oregon, all that kind
• 2:21:38
  of stuff, right? And it's beautiful and it's the
• 2:21:41
  best track stadium in the world in my opinion.
• 2:21:44
  I'm also very biased, but whatever.
• 2:21:46
  I guess, as you can see over my shoulder, we're American.
• 2:21:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
• 2:21:50
  But even then when they got it done, I remember walking with
• 2:21:52
  one of their administrators and I was like, hey, so it's all
• 2:21:54
  done and I can't it goes there for the very first meeting.
• 2:21:57
  So they didn't even had a meet yet.
• 2:21:58
  And it's like, would you have done anything different?
• 2:22:00
  You know, now that it's built like, yeah, we, you know, we
• 2:22:02
  didn't take into this. Consider now is some things that
• 2:22:04
  are very organized. One of the things was like a row
• 2:22:07
  for photographers. I wish you had to consider
• 2:22:11
  yourself about that trend at at Uri.
• 2:22:13
  But that is something to Oregon. But there is.
• 2:22:15
  But it really helped me see like there is no perfect facility
• 2:22:18
  that there is a great facility and one that will be much better
• 2:22:21
  than what you have today and it'll serve you well.
• 2:22:23
  But perfection. You're right.
• 2:22:24
  You're going to get on there and be like, man, you know, we
• 2:22:26
  should have done this thing up here.
• 2:22:28
  We're cool. Life is still going to go on.
• 2:22:29
  We're still going to get great recruits and great athletes and
• 2:22:31
  host great meets and all this kind of stuff.
• 2:22:33
  Great practice time. But boy, if I could have done
• 2:22:35
  that differently now or whatever, you know, little
• 2:22:37
  things like that. But you're going to your upgrade
• 2:22:39
  to your facilities there is is 1000%.
• 2:22:43
  I mean, it's going to be amazing for you guys and for your
• 2:22:45
  athletes. Yeah, yeah, we're, I mean, we're
• 2:22:48
  over the moon about it. And like I said, this, this was
• 2:22:50
  our, this was like our wish list.
• 2:22:52
  This is like our dream track. Like we didn't, we didn't have
• 2:22:54
  to make any adjustments off of that because, because now all of
• 2:22:57
  a sudden we had the money to to create this thing.
• 2:22:59
  So, you know, these guys have been working, this is week 11
• 2:23:04
  and and they're going to be laying the asphalt layer soon.
• 2:23:07
  And, and so they'll take a couple months off during the
• 2:23:10
  winter time, but they'll be back at it and have this thing ready
• 2:23:13
  by, yeah, by the summertime. So I'm looking forward to all
• 2:23:16
  the, the Gill in ground stuff going in for the throws area.
• 2:23:20
  And yeah, we're, we're very excited about that.
• 2:23:23
  Yeah, I appreciate that very much.
• 2:23:24
  You know, great partners with Lisa and MF athletics and you
• 2:23:28
  know, our, my job is not to be a podcast.
• 2:23:31
  So it's to serve coaches like you with equipment.
• 2:23:33
  And so we're, we're pumped, man. But you know what, our ego is
• 2:23:37
  not based on who's on the gay board.
• 2:23:39
  Our ego is based on our we serving a coach.
• 2:23:41
  So whether it's Rhode Island high school or University of
• 2:23:43
  Rhode Island, man, we're pumped. And we couldn't be more excited
• 2:23:46
  for you guys. Healthy things grow.
• 2:23:48
  So things are very healthy at the University of Rhode Island
• 2:23:50
  track and field, that's for sure.
• 2:23:52
  Yeah, going, going well right now.
• 2:23:54
  Like I just honestly like for those who like might get into
• 2:23:59
  coaching eventually, like this, this job is very rewarding.
• 2:24:03
  I mean, are we ever going to be rich?
• 2:24:05
  Like no, but, but you can make a lot of difference.
• 2:24:08
  And, and honestly, like, I, I don't feel like I'm really
• 2:24:13
  working when I'm, when I'm coming to work.
• 2:24:15
  And I, I know that's just one of those things that like a lot of
• 2:24:17
  adults say, it's just, you know, like you get into real adulting
• 2:24:21
  and it's just not, it's not as fun as you might think it is,
• 2:24:24
  but I'm, I'm having fun. I love it.
• 2:24:26
  I love it, man. Well, I am super happy for you,
• 2:24:28
  man. Happy for all you guys.
• 2:24:29
  Well, like I said, we'll have the women's staff on next,
• 2:24:32
  hopefully it's actually next week if I'm again, if I schedule
• 2:24:35
  that correctly. But man, Trent, it has been a
• 2:24:37
  blast dude. You know, I haven't done a 2
• 2:24:41
  hour plus banger in a while and felt like there's still a lot of
• 2:24:44
  questions I have, man, but super pumped to learn more about you,
• 2:24:48
  you know, really excited. I love your career path.
• 2:24:50
  I mean, it's super interesting. Little I can't even say
• 2:24:54
  traditional anymore because I've just learned so many different
• 2:24:57
  paths, but it is unique that you know, you would think after 300
• 2:25:00
  and something interviews that like you can't surprise me
• 2:25:03
  anymore. But I love the you know, going
• 2:25:05
  to Martha's Vineyard and almost like there was a little bit of
• 2:25:08
  that crack of like coaching. We might not have coach B here.
• 2:25:13
  We might have restaurant owner trend about out there.
• 2:25:16
  So I love that the sport and the profession pulled you back in
• 2:25:21
  though. Like there was that gravity
• 2:25:23
  force, if you will, that pulled you back in.
• 2:25:25
  Cuz I think many, many kids are better off for it.
• 2:25:27
  You've had a positive impact on a lot of young people and I
• 2:25:30
  think that's extremely important.
• 2:25:32
  And I think other coaches you've given people jobs and things
• 2:25:35
  like that, you know, you're, you're part of helping people,
• 2:25:37
  the construction people, they need jobs.
• 2:25:38
  They, we have to have construction for them to have
• 2:25:40
  jobs. And so Rhode Island and you and
• 2:25:42
  the women's staff are, are part of that.
• 2:25:43
  And I think that's, I mean, that's really cool, man.
• 2:25:45
  So I've had an absolute blast today.
• 2:25:46
  I'm really grateful for you. Yeah, thanks so much, Mike.
• 2:25:49
  Honestly, like it's been it's been a real pleasure.
• 2:25:51
  I didn't know how this whole podcasting thing was go like
• 2:25:53
  this is my first time doing something like this but.
• 2:25:56
  You did great. Bro 2 1/2 hours and it's it's
• 2:25:59
  just gone by real fast so I appreciate everything.
• 2:26:02
  I appreciate you, man. Well, thank you.
• 2:26:04
  I'll let you go. I know you got to get lunch.
• 2:26:05
  I got to get lunch. We got a whole we got got a real
• 2:26:07
  job to go to. So appreciate you being here
• 2:26:10
  again. Time is the most important and
• 2:26:11
  most valuable thing you can give me.
• 2:26:12
  So I'm really grateful for your time as you're getting ready to
• 2:26:15
  go into season here guys and gals for listening.
• 2:26:17
  Thank you do so much man. I guess this would still happen
• 2:26:21
  if none of you around, but it's a lot more fun knowing you guys
• 2:26:23
  are around and learning about guys like Trent and their
• 2:26:26
  journey in this great profession.
• 2:26:27
  So thanks for being here. Join us next week and we'll do
• 2:26:29
  it all though. Thanks guys.
• 2:26:36
  If it goes to appreciate the coach, the ones that point
• 2:26:38
  people most every season needs a voice of reason speaking the
• 2:26:42
  growth you got to prep before you carry the load.
• 2:26:44
  Ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the
• 2:26:47
  go proper handoff to stay in the zone which you're packing for
• 2:26:50
  the road. There's more than one way to go
• 2:26:52
  taking those that's paying. You're told it ain't practice if
• 2:26:55
  you're perfect Saint Clair, it can't happen until you listen
• 2:26:58
  with both is you can't mentor without a mentor of years of
• 2:27:01
  experience. You can reinvent those years.
• 2:27:03
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price
• 2:27:06
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and the fight not
• 2:27:10
  a win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 2:27:12
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to, it's all
• 2:27:15
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 2:27:18
  6,000,000. Waste of time, choose none so we
• 2:27:21
  y'all cross the finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
• 2:27:23
  from the experts but y'all got to put in the network.
• 2:27:26
  Guild Athletics is a network. It's all about connections put
• 2:27:29
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 2:27:32
  blessing.