Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #319: Antonio Wells-Winston Salem State University

Transcript

#319: Antonio Wells-Winston Salem State University · 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 on Gil Athletics connections.
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  All right, here we are. We are back.
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  You're back right here on the Gil Athletics Connections
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  Podcast, but again, you press play.
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  I'm just so humbled, man. I'm just so grateful that you
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  guys would be here because I'm excited.
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  I know I say that every episode, and I've said that for 300 and
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  something episodes, but let me tell you, I am excited.
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  We got to take a step back and remember, I get paid to do this.
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  There's nobody who has a cooler job than this guy right here.
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  And I'm excited to continue to do that job, do it well, and
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  bring you just some really amazing people throughout the
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  country and even throughout the world.
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  And today we're going to go to we're going to go E it's kind of
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  southeast. We're going to North Carolina.
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  Help me welcome from Winston Salem State University, the
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  wise, the wonderful Mr. Antonio Wells.
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  Antonio, how are you, my friend? Good man.
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  Thank you for having me up man. Like I I've watched before and
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  seen quite a few of my friends and colleagues and I'm, I'm, I'm
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  quite honored to be up here, buddy.
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  See, when you say that I always put the person on, I, I, I get
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  to put you on the stage and put you on the on the heat here.
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  So what's been your favorite one?
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  If you you listen to a few of them, what's been your favorite
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  one you've listened to? Well, boy, Kenny, man, Kenny
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  Anderson, that's central Methodist man.
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  Like just seeing where he's come from and like we were coaching
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  against each other here in the CR AA as an assistant.
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  Coach, That's right. And like, that's the one that
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  really tired. I was like, OK Kenny, I'll see
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  you bud. Kenny, that's a great I love
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  that that's one of your favorite ones.
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  That's a really interesting component about this podcast
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  because here's here's the thing that I worry about today in the
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  middle of 2025. You know, we're on episode 300
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  and something is that means there's 300 past guests that are
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  amazing. I mean, from Brooks Johnson,
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  Kenny Dan path, Diljit Thomas Taylor, Diljit Taylor, of
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  course, you know, my mind blanks on everyone as soon as I say
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  that, but 300 amazing people. And I'm worried like, oh man, I
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  think people like, 'cause you know, we still have new, new
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  subscribers every day. And it's like, oh, I think
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  they're, they're like starting right here with you.
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  And that's awesome. I'm so glad if you're, if this
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  is your first time listening to the podcast, I'm so glad you're
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  here. It's amazing, but there are 300
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  other amazing people. And Kenny is an interesting kind
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  of snapshot of it because when we had him on, he was just
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  beginning there at Central Methodist.
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  And he has, I mean, he's killed it, man.
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  I mean, good God, everything he said in that podcast has come
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  true about, you know, his work ethic and the staff and what
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  we're going to do and what we're going to accomplish.
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  I mean, it's neat to kind of like a few because he was, he
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  was pretty early. I bet he's like in the 100.
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  So he's, you know, he's several years ago now.
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  It it, it'd be interesting to go back and listen to that and and
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  then go see what he's done these past few years.
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  I mean, it's kind of a neat little snapshot in time when we
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  had him on there. So that was, that's cool.
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  Sarah. I love that.
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  Well, we get to create our own snapshot of you today, my
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  friend. And and this is, you know, we,
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  if you've listened to a few episodes, you know, I say this,
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  you know, there's a lot of different guests that I have
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  here. Some are like, you know, some
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  are like family to me. You know, I've, I've known them
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  forever. They're like brothers or sisters
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  to me and, you know, love them to death.
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  Others are just brand new. Never met them.
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  That happens every once in a while too.
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  And those are so cool. Each one is is a kind of
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  interesting for me at least, sitting behind the mic here
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  asking the questions. And then others are kind of a
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  little bit in the middle and you're a little bit in the
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  middle like I know you, but we're not like, you know, we.
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  Haven't known for eight years. So, so I'm excited about that.
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  I know enough to be dangerous about you.
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  That's what I that's how I put it with you.
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  So I'm excited to learn more about you, your background, your
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  journey, and of course, you know, you're head coach of a
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  really good division two program here at Winston Salem State.
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  So as we get to that point in your journey, you know, I got a
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  ton of questions of just, you know, how you're doing it, how
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  you're transforming it, what your goals are, what's got you
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  excited? So I'm really, I'm pumped to to
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  learn more about you and and share your journey with with our
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  listeners, Antonio. Good deal.
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  I'm on it man. Awesome, man, Awesome.
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  Well, let's do it, man. Let's get in our Wayback Machine
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  here. You know, my, it's my first
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  question for every single guest that we have here on the show,
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  you know, assuming you were an athlete.
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  And we have certainly learned that not every great track coach
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  was an athlete back in the day. But assuming you're an athlete,
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  where does track and field? Where does it start for you?
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  Well, it started for me in good old Dublin, GA, man.
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  I'm from the country, parts of Georgia.
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  I actually started running track later in grade school.
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  I was more of a wrestler than anything.
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  Like honestly, I was a better wrestler than I was a track
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  athlete. I was one of those small kids
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  that wrestled one O3 112. But I started running track my
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  9th grade year in high school, didn't start running cross
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  country until 10th grade and just kind of roll with it from
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  there, man. I was a middle distance distance
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  kid coming out of high school. Not much training at that high
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  school level. And I knew that I was going to
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  Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, GA.
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  And like, knowing that they didn't have a wrestling program,
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  I was like, I, I have to do something.
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  I want to do something well. Well, let's you know, I, I
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  warned you before that we hit record about, you know, you're,
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  you're already in college. I have a million questions.
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  Still in high school, Still in high school.
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  So before we get to Fort Valley State, which is a great school,
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  we used to when I coached at Troy, we used to go to meets at
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  Fort Valley State and I'd love their setup with the big, almost
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  a mountain, but a big rock right there.
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  At least it was back then. It was a, it was a cool little
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  setup That might have been my first college meet that I
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  coached at was actually at Fort Valley State.
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  So I love that. So before that, so did you
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  wrestle and run track all the way?
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  Through high school, so I started wrestling in 6th grade,
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  like I was little little when I started wrestling and like that
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  was my primary thing. I mean, I, I took a shot at
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  football and realized real quick, like I'm not the size of
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  these other guys out here. I knew that wasn't going to be
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  my calling. But no, like wrestling, man.
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  That was the, I guess, catalyst for me and, and athletics as a
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  whole, I enjoyed how it was an individual sport and how what I
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  do effects directly what's going on in the competition.
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  So that was one of the things that really drew me to track.
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  But man, as I wrestled through middle school, my high school
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  coach at the time, he was like, yeah, you're definitely going to
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  have a spot. Because I was one of the smaller
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  kids. I I came into high school
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  probably weighing a good 98 lbs. Like for real?
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  Yes, I was. I was small.
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  Like I didn't hit a growth spurt as far as height goes until like
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  maybe 10th grade for real. Wow, is that right?
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  I wrestled 1O3112 my first two years of high school.
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  So wrestling's interesting for me.
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  So I grew up in Southeast Alabama and like, I didn't even
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  think of wrestling as a sport because we didn't have it.
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  No one in our area had. It was kind of like in my mind,
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  I would have said it would have been a big school type of, of,
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  of a sport. So like the, you know, some of
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  the Birmingham schools had it Mobile, etcetera.
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  So I really knew nothing about wrestling outside of, you know,
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  www.d F whatever, but I knew nothing.
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  You know, maybe I watched the Olympics or something like that.
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  And then I went at a high school and moved up to Chicago and I
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  started coaching high school track and wrestling's huge in
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  Chicago in the high school side. And so the school that I worked
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  at, De La Salle High School in the Catholic League up there,
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  they had wrestlers. So I so I'd see them like, you
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  know, it became like, oh, these they're they're part of our
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  athletics. You know, they're, they're
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  athletics. And then I started learning more
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  and more about it because I'd see them like running with
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  garbage bags on. And then I started learning more
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  about, you know, cutting weight and stuff like that.
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  I don't necessarily want to dive into the health aspects or
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  unhealth aspects of wrestling, but I do wonder because I did
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  see them. They ran all the time.
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  I mean, you know, cutting weight, right?
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  So they were running all the time.
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  Is that what drew you to track? You're like, man, I'm already
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  running a a crap ton. Like I could actually that could
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  be an event. I don't have to do it as
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  preparation for an event. It's it's an event.
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  So that's exactly what drew me to it.
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  Like I never had to worry about cutting weight.
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  Sure, you probably had the opposite problem actually.
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  Like, yeah, like I I never had to worry about cutting weight.
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  So when we did our conditioning, like, I was always at the front.
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  Like I'm the smallest kid, these two three mile runs, 30 minute,
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  40 minute runs, like it was nothing to me.
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  I was like, this is this is what I do, This is fun.
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  I'll be back first for the team. And like at that point, got to
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  high school, my art teacher was actually our cross country and
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  like she helped with track and she was like, you need to go out
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  there and run track. Like if you're not doing
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  anything else, running at least a mile like that helps.
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  And I just so happen to get out there and enjoy it.
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  In in wrestling season, if I remember right, it's kind of
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  like basketball season. It's kind of that winter.
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  Yeah. OK.
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  So so cross and track season would be kind of open for you.
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  They were just normally training times for you.
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  Those were actually open for you to be in a sport during that
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  time. And it worked out like because
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  like I said, I didn't run cross country my first year in high
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  school. I was new to it.
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  I mean, walking down the halls weighing 103 and if that just
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  kind of in my own zone, I was like, yeah, I'm a wrestle.
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  And after that first year of wrestling, my wrestling coach
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  and my ARC teacher, who was track coach at the time, like
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  they were like, yeah, you should be running track.
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  Like if you're not going to do anything during the springtime,
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  during the fall time, like these are things that's going to help
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  you. And like they really did.
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  Like it was nobody else running distance.
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  It was nobody else running mid distance.
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  So the training was a little kind of spaced out.
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  Like I was just going runs and I was like, OK, this is what I do
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  for training. I'll go for a nice little long
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  run, run to the railroad tracks and come back.
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  And that would. Be my joy.
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  Like it was nothing like. No structure.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now that I really sit back
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  and think about it, like I don't recall any interval training.
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  Now, some people could, could thrive in that situation.
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  It sounds like you thrive, like, OK, and maybe you know, your
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  high school, you're 1418 years old, you know, you can be
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  excused for not knowing that there actually was structure for
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  a distance running and things like that.
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  Others would not like that. Like they they would, you know,
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  and typically young people, they won't necessarily tell you this,
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  but they do crave structure. And you and you did have some
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  structure, right? You had to, you know, hey,
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  practice starts at next time and meets her these days.
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  So there's, you know, some structure there.
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  But you that that didn't turn you off, that that wasn't like
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  you didn't have a coach telling you necessarily what to do on a
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  daily basis, intervals, etcetera, is more like, I go run
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  for 30 minutes. You you seem to be OK with that.
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  Yeah, like we were in the rural parts of Georgia.
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  Like granted, we had the third largest county in the state of
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  Georgia, but it's still country, like very rural.
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  So I didn't expect us to have just that type of structure when
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  it came to track and field. Like, we have some great
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  athletes by all means. Like I, I remember competing
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  with like Lee Curry, like my man was an amazing long jumper,
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  amazing sprinter. And he actually went on to
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  college and I honestly didn't know at the time like that he
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  went on to college and did really well in track and field
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  until like I'm well into coaching and look back and talk
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  with him a little bit. I was like, oh, OK.
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  And like, we just didn't have that yeah push.
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  Like if anybody were to come recruit us from that area during
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  that time, like it would be like truly picking up on kids that
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  didn't didn't know that we're really untapped in track.
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  Like we were just athletes at the time.
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  We just did it. Now you mentioned kind of some
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  of the similarities between wrestling and track in regards
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  to like it's a very individual sport in the sense of you got to
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  win your weight class, you got to win your event, but there is
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  a team score at the end of the day, Unlike like a football
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  where I played football where I could have had a great game as
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  an offensive lineman, but if the receiver and quarterback weren't
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  In Sync, it didn't matter that we still lost, right.
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  So so I get that. Why not like like I'm trying to
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  think of other like, you know, real like we're distance and
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  endurance is a is a big asset. Why not like a soccer or
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  anything like that? So we didn't have soccer like it
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  was basketball, baseball, cross country, track, Yeah.
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  OK. Yeah, makes sense.
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  And my size alone, like I, I, I'm not out there balling, not
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  shooting like, and like I, I, I enjoy the fact that I can be in
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  a sport and it really just came down to what I can do.
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  And like, granted, yes, it goes with talent to a certain extent,
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  but I don't have to be tall. I don't have to be big.
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  Like as long as I'm getting to work in and I'm able to do
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  everything within my means, like I can still be competitive.
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  Yeah, there's things within your control.
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  You can't control how high you are or how tall you are even
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  necessarily how much you weigh in regards to like, you know,
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  you couldn't have said well I want to be 180 and snap your
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  fingers like, well that that wasn't happening, right?
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  Yeah, that makes sense. So as you go along in your, your
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  high school career, you do both sports.
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  You already gave us kind of a spoiler alert.
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  You go to Fort Valley State and you said, well, they didn't have
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  wrestling. And I wanted to do something.
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  How to talk to us about the college selection.
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  Like, you know, was it very in depth and you know, I went to
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  five different schools or I looked at 5 different schools or
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  was it like, you know, I need to go school somewhere and I could
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  afford that one. Tell tell us about that
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  transition of how you picked which school to go to college
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  wise. So I already knew I was going to
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  Fort Valley from early just because it was a family thing.
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  Like quite a bit of my family went to Fort Valley State.
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  And if not Fort Valley State, it was Savannah State or Morris
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  Brown College at the time, right?
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  Morris Brown had the issues right as I was in high school.
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  So I, I didn't even look their way, but I was in a summer
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  program, I want to say after my junior year in high school, it
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  was a summer biology program, STEM program at Fort Valley and
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  just kind of getting in and learning the insurance and outs
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  of Fort Valley and how it works and just the lay of the land.
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  I already knew that's that's where I was going to go.
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  And as far as track and field goes, I was like, I'm going to
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  give it a shot. Like I remember after my senior
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  year of high school, I sent the e-mail because I'm pretty sure
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  it was coach Tyree Price at the time, which is one of my
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  mentors, one of my guys. Great dude, love him, such a
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  good dude. I remember emailing him and I, I
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  can't even recall if I got a e-mail back, but I know once I
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  got to campus, me and a couple of guys in my freshman class at
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  the time, we were like, yeah, we want to try track and field.
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  And we got in touch with Coach Price and it was like, that was
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  it. We were there and at a HBCU
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  smaller HBCU black kid that runs distance willingly.
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  Yeah, sure, sure, sure. At that time I he was like,
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  yeah, for sure, come on. What what were you thinking as a
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  18 ish year old kid for like like I want to be an astronaut,
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  a business owner. What were you thinking about
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  majoring in? What were you thinking?
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  Like I want to become something. I wanted to be a pediatrician.
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  Really. Yeah.
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  Why is that So I, I don't know, just I guess it was me being so
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  small as a kid. Like I I really wanted to make
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  sure the younger people, the smaller people were taken care
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  of. Not that I real like I really
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  didn't realize how much that sure.
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  Sure, sure. Like 'cause I learned, I learned
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  the hard way. Organic chemistry is not your.
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  Friend like that, that has changed a lot of people's
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  majors. Like that that changed a lot,
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  but I went in and pre Med and it eventually became biology like
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  because of organic chemistry and chemistry I had a extra
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  semester, extra 2 semesters and I took summer school and fall
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  semester and graduated in 2010 because I came in in 2005.
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  So yeah, had I had some true guidance outside of my coaches
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  at the time, like, I probably would have steered towards plant
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  science. Yeah, Oh.
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  Yeah, 'cause Fort Valley was a big agricultural school.
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  Yeah, that's right. The electives that I took from
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  botany to entomology like those were great for me.
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  I just didn't put it in my mind to I might need to switch to
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  plant science like but either way I I finished up with my
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  bachelors in biology. Well, I, I love that you had
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  your initial thought of being a pediatrician.
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  You know, I talked to, you know, track coaches every day, every
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  day of my life. And there's certainly, you know,
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  maybe no bigger fan of the people who choose to be coaches
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  than than this guy right here. And I still will tell every
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  coach I'm like, so you got into this.
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  You could have been doing so much more.
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  And and I'm not, you know, again, I'm not taking away what
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  you do as a coach. You know, the positive impact
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  you make in young people's amazing.
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  But I think about things like that.
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  I'm like, man, Antonio, you could have been doctor.
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  Well, you could have been a pediatrician.
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  And I'm going to go out on a limb and say someone who focuses
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  on children and children's medicine.
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  That's a little bit more impactful than, you know, having
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  a kid run the mile faster. And again, I'm not belittling
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  that because, you know. No, no, no, you're right.
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  But it's like, I just see so many really smart guys and gals
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  like you that I'm like, you chose the coach track and you
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  could have cured cancer, you know?
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  So I love that. I love that.
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  So tell me about your college experience.
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  I love that Tyrique was there, you know, one of the you know,
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  if you're not if if you're listening to this show actually
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  and you don't know about Tyree, he has he coaches.
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  So he he gets a a grace with his consistency, but he has done a
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  very similar show interviewing coaches.
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  Typically through YouTube and he does an amazing job like I, you
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  know my, my goal here as the host of the Gil connections
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  podcast is to interview every coach in the country, right?
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  But I only get to do this 52 * a year.
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  So as you can imagine, you know, I always joke, you know, it's
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  like Pokémon, I'm trying to catch them all, but I won't, I
• 20:23
  won't, you know, my whole lifetime, I will not be able to
• 20:25
  get every coach on the program. So when other people are doing
• 20:30
  interview styles like this with track coaches, I always bless
• 20:32
  and encourage and you know, how do we do more?
• 20:35
  And so every time I see Tyreke, I just saw him this weekend.
• 20:38
  I think we're probably some of this in July, but back in May
• 20:40
  and June, I was at the Incident of the West and I saw him and I
• 20:42
  was like, you've you got to do more, you got to do more.
• 20:45
  And you know, he's like Mike, you know, I got a coach, right?
• 20:47
  It's like, I get, I get, I get. But if you go to YouTube and
• 20:50
  just search his name, it'll bring up his past interviews
• 20:54
  that he's had. And he's had amazing, amazing
• 20:56
  individuals, different ones than I had.
• 20:57
  You know, again, we, you know, there's so many amazing men and
• 20:59
  women who choose to be track coach.
• 21:00
  So I just encourage you to go check out Tyreke's interviews.
• 21:05
  I can't. He calls it something like gold
• 21:08
  medal gold. I want to say Trump in the
• 21:13
  Champions. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 21:16
  And it's bad because I was actually one of the coaches he
• 21:19
  interviewed. Perfect.
• 21:20
  Of course. Yeah, I'm, I'm going to do a
• 21:21
  quick we're going to do a live search here on while we're doing
• 21:26
  this podcast and we're going to look up YouTube and see what
• 21:31
  pops up. I'm not sure I get Internet in
• 21:33
  here, but but I know if you if you search his name, it'll pop
• 21:37
  up. Yeah.
• 21:38
  For some reason YouTube is not popping up anything for me.
• 21:40
  Anyway, go to YouTube, check him out.
• 21:41
  Yeah, it's something of champions.
• 21:44
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
• 21:45
  You're right. Or if you're on his Facebook,
• 21:47
  you post a lot of them there. But go check out his interviews.
• 21:50
  He does a great job and and Antonio was there.
• 21:52
  So what you can do is after you listen to this episode, you can
• 21:55
  go back and listen to his Tyreek Price episode and see that he
• 21:59
  changed his story at all. That's always fun.
• 22:01
  Like, yeah. Is he consistent?
• 22:02
  I bet? I bet he is.
• 22:03
  I bet he is. So tell me about your experience
• 22:05
  in college with Tyreek. And and you had some other
• 22:08
  coaches there as well. How was that?
• 22:10
  Did you ever miss wrestling? And how did track go for you?
• 22:13
  So it was an adjustment trying to adjust the having that amount
• 22:18
  of free time as a country kid just being where I was.
• 22:24
  But I love my college experience and I credit that to not only
• 22:32
  like Coach Price and setting the tone because I actually had
• 22:37
  three different coaches at Fort Valley, but not only coach Price
• 22:44
  and the team, but my friends. Like that was probably the most
• 22:50
  impactful thing about my college experience.
• 22:55
  My friends who some ran track, some didn't, but we all from a
• 23:01
  moral and just go level like we we jailed together and like it
• 23:07
  it it's I tell people all the time, like I wouldn't change my
• 23:11
  college experience for anything. Do I wish I knew more?
• 23:16
  Of course, but I know that was where I needed to be at that
• 23:23
  point in time in life. Those friends are my brothers.
• 23:28
  Like, these are people that I confide in and talk with to this
• 23:34
  day. And that, that, that alone was
• 23:40
  what made my experience as a student at Fort Valley State,
• 23:43
  like truly what it was. The school, rich history, rich
• 23:49
  love from alumni. I die.
• 23:53
  I'm a die hard Wildcat, Fort Valley State Wildcat.
• 23:58
  And it it's amazing just to see a lot of the Wildcats that are
• 24:02
  out in different places, different things.
• 24:05
  I actually had a young lady who competes for opposing team whose
• 24:10
  mother is a Wildcat. So every time we see each other,
• 24:14
  what's up Wildcat. But that was that was a big
• 24:18
  thing there. As far as my track experience at
• 24:22
  Fort Valley, it was eye opening. Like I said, coming from high
• 24:26
  school, didn't have structure. And what do you mean got a
• 24:29
  little? Bit more structure this time
• 24:30
  now. Like what do you mean?
• 24:32
  Coach Price? What?
• 24:33
  What do you mean I have to do 16?
• 24:35
  Two hundreds? Well, what is this?
• 24:38
  What? You mean?
• 24:40
  It was something to get used to. And so how did how did you?
• 24:44
  Because that's a pretty big adjustment you're used to.
• 24:47
  I'm not going to take anything away from your high school
• 24:49
  coach, but you know, you're used to maybe go for a 30 minute run
• 24:53
  and we'll see you tomorrow, whatever.
• 24:55
  Now it's like, hey, well we started 3 and after you do this
• 24:57
  one, by the way, we're going to tell you what your warm up is
• 25:00
  and now you're do 16 by 200 that we want you to hit this mark.
• 25:03
  That's yeah, that's like a 180 on the structure side.
• 25:06
  How did you handle that? I mean I just got in and did
• 25:09
  what I needed to do. Like I guess that I was a walk
• 25:13
  on kid and there was a international student at the
• 25:18
  time that Coach Price was like, hey man, when you beat him then
• 25:23
  we can talk about. And I remember the day that I
• 25:27
  did beat him, it was actually in a time trial 3K or it was
• 25:32
  something like that. I was like, hey man, what's up?
• 25:36
  But no, no, no, like it was, it brought a competitive spirit out
• 25:42
  of me that like I thought I had, but it it's a little different
• 25:46
  now as a college student, college athlete and
• 25:51
  understanding the insurance and outs of a little bit more
• 25:55
  travel. Seeing that we are at the
• 25:57
  college level that we do go to different meets and states to
• 26:02
  compete. Like just seeing the level of
• 26:06
  dedication, the level of like that I have to put into the
• 26:11
  sport. Like it was, it was a huge
• 26:13
  adjustment, but it was something that I enjoy.
• 26:17
  It became quite a bit of who I was on campus.
• 26:22
  They was like, OK, you're the skinny guy that was running
• 26:25
  through campus. No shirt on.
• 26:27
  Yeah, that's me. Like I, I would, I would be that
• 26:33
  person that was running through campus, running around campus.
• 26:37
  And that was really what people knew me for during college.
• 26:41
  But it, it was a great experience.
• 26:46
  And like I said, I had three different coaches.
• 26:49
  So after Coach Price left, because as a matter of fact,
• 26:53
  Coach Coop was his assistant coach when I was there.
• 26:57
  Too. Another great guy.
• 26:58
  Holy. Donald Cooper, asthma guy.
• 27:04
  But after Coach Bryce left and Coach Koop left, coach Marlo
• 27:09
  Mensi, she was one of the Georgia Southern greats.
• 27:14
  She's a twin. She came in and she kind of gave
• 27:19
  me a good check on what I was doing because she gave me a
• 27:23
  little bit more structure than even Coach Bryce gave me when it
• 27:27
  came to training. I I felt myself making a shift
• 27:32
  and getting noticeably faster like under her.
• 27:37
  And after Coach Mitzi left, it was a Lakeisha O Kelly, formerly
• 27:42
  A Lakeisha Williamson. She came in and became the head
• 27:47
  coach at that time. And her and her husband are the
• 27:50
  ones that really took me under their wing because I was done
• 27:55
  with my eligibility in that last semester that I was in school,
• 28:00
  and they really kind of pulled me into coaching at that time.
• 28:05
  So talk to us about the, you know, having a different coach
• 28:09
  every year. We, we've had that in the past
• 28:12
  and in fact, we just talked about this here just recently
• 28:15
  where, you know, from the outside looking in, when you
• 28:19
  hear a story like that, most people be like, oh, well, that,
• 28:22
  that kind of sucks because you know, as coaches, we believe in
• 28:24
  consistency, right? Consistency matters and things
• 28:27
  like that. So, you know, if you're getting
• 28:28
  a new coach every year, there's some lack of consistency.
• 28:31
  They're not all going to they're probably there could be some
• 28:34
  real radical differences in how they thought about things and
• 28:36
  and trained. And then there could be some
• 28:39
  some consensus, some similarities there.
• 28:42
  But from the outside, we would say, oh, maybe not that great of
• 28:45
  experience. Now you're expressing the exact
• 28:47
  opposite of what a great experience overall.
• 28:49
  But we had one coach, I think it was David's self, if I remember
• 28:53
  correct. Now, now it's Sam Houston State
• 28:55
  doing a great job there. And he had a similar thing.
• 28:58
  And I said the same thing like, oh, that kind of stinks.
• 29:00
  Do you wish you could have had the same coach, you know, all
• 29:01
  four years And he goes, you know, I probably, you know,
• 29:04
  would have said yes to that. He goes, but I got to see four
• 29:08
  different people and how they coach and for a guy who, you
• 29:12
  know, spoiled alert became a track coach, it's like I got to
• 29:14
  learn. Oh, I like what she did.
• 29:16
  Oh, I like what he did and kind of amalgamated it, you know,
• 29:21
  cheating here a little bit going into the future.
• 29:23
  Do you now see where maybe that was actually for a guy who ends
• 29:26
  up going to become a track coach?
• 29:28
  Was that a ended up being a positive or would you have
• 29:30
  traded it all for like, hey man, I wish I'd just had the same
• 29:32
  coach for all four years? So I don't look back and say,
• 29:37
  oh, I wish that would have. And he's like, outside of me
• 29:40
  wishing I knew more. Especially learning what I have
• 29:43
  as a coach, like, yeah, sure. But when it comes to that
• 29:48
  particular thing, it just shows I chose Fort Valley for Fort
• 29:52
  Valley, not the program, not the track and field program.
• 29:57
  So either way, I knew I was going to be OK.
• 30:01
  I enjoyed my experience at that school and from the coaching
• 30:07
  perspective, like yes, I took from all of them.
• 30:11
  And I see how like a lot of the better athletes kind of struggle
• 30:19
  with transition from coach to coach, whereas I was just like
• 30:23
  happy to be there. I I was enjoying my time
• 30:27
  regardless. And I guess shows where
• 30:32
  stability is a big, big thing when it comes to coaching a lot
• 30:36
  of these younger kids, these new generations like it, it's major.
• 30:43
  And that's one thing that I've really taken with me just trying
• 30:47
  to create a space of stability and and just routine in a sense
• 30:52
  for progress. You know, you said something
• 30:56
  twice now. It caught my ear the first time
• 30:59
  you said it. And now when you say it again,
• 31:01
  it's a little bit like a, you know, a teacher says, hey, if I
• 31:03
  if you hear the same thing more than once, it's probably going
• 31:05
  to be on the test, right? So I'm kind of getting this
• 31:06
  like, maybe I should ask this question.
• 31:08
  You've now said twice that I wish I would have.
• 31:12
  I wish I would have known more, I believe is how you put it.
• 31:15
  Maybe paraphrase a little bit and you're kind of alluding
• 31:17
  towards the coaching side of it. But what do you mean?
• 31:20
  Let's dig in there a little bit. What do you mean by that?
• 31:23
  So now to discredit any of my coaches, but none of them were
• 31:27
  distance coaches, none of them ran distance races.
• 31:32
  So it, it was things that like I, I just straight up missed out
• 31:38
  on like from the amount of mileage that I should have been
• 31:43
  doing, from the amount of just volume that I needed at the
• 31:47
  time. Like it is, it was evident.
• 31:51
  And like these are things that like I, I take with me.
• 31:56
  I mean, I'm not super crazy on doing a lot of miles because
• 32:01
  there's more than one way to skin a cat.
• 32:03
  And unless you're running those distances, unless you're like
• 32:07
  truly running a 10K5K from a competition standpoint, like
• 32:12
  it's a lot of ways to get that volume in and just looking at
• 32:19
  who I was and just how much I wanted to get better and be in
• 32:24
  that space. Yeah.
• 32:26
  It was a lot more than I could have done.
• 32:28
  That that makes a lot of sense. And I and I bet if we asked all
• 32:31
  four of those coaches, yeah, I know too well, Cooper and and
• 32:37
  Tyreek, I bet they would say, you know, he's right.
• 32:39
  You know, I wasn't a distance coach.
• 32:40
  I was doing the best I could. And, but you're right, that was
• 32:43
  not my Forte at all, right. And so it's interesting to hear
• 32:51
  that because you, you, you look at some program I've advised,
• 32:54
  you know, some programs where when they're getting facilities
• 32:56
  and stuff and we talk about, you know, there's all the different
• 32:58
  event groups. So it means there's, you know,
• 32:59
  different equipment for each event group.
• 33:01
  And I'll talk to them. I'll be like, So what do you
• 33:03
  plan on emphasizing in your program?
• 33:05
  Like what do you, what do you think you are going to do or not
• 33:07
  do? What are you going to hire, not
• 33:09
  hire for your staff? And so some of them will be
• 33:11
  like, well, you know, we're brand new program, so we're not
• 33:13
  going to hire a throws coach. We just, you know, we're going
• 33:15
  to focus on distance and sprints first.
• 33:17
  And I'm like, OK, then you're not going to hire a throws
• 33:21
  coach. That's cool.
• 33:21
  So maybe you don't need the best of the best hammer cage or
• 33:23
  whatever you got to. But are you going to go recruit
• 33:26
  throwers? Well, yeah, because we need to
• 33:27
  have numbers. I'm like, oh, you hear yourself,
• 33:31
  Like we got to be careful with that.
• 33:34
  Yeah. And not that, you know, again,
• 33:35
  you, you mentioned your walk on. So, you know, there's maybe some
• 33:38
  and, and distance seems to, I don't know, I just caught
• 33:41
  myself. I want to say distance seems
• 33:43
  different because I can just send you off on, you know, I
• 33:46
  know I literally just caught myself and I was like, well,
• 33:48
  that's still not fair necessarily for the student
• 33:50
  athlete and student athlete experience.
• 33:52
  So, so I get that in and I think you're expressing it correctly
• 33:56
  when you're saying, Hey, I'm not shading my coaches.
• 33:58
  I, I, I feel like you, you didn't say this, but I feel like
• 34:01
  the sentiment is, hey, they did the best they could.
• 34:03
  However, under a distance coach, maybe things would have looked a
• 34:07
  little bit different for me. And and to go even further and
• 34:10
  like they were very young at the time.
• 34:13
  Right. Like where Valley was one of
• 34:17
  those stopping points for coaches that like they were
• 34:22
  young, right? Like I, I'm looking back and
• 34:25
  really seeing how close an age like me and coach Price and me
• 34:28
  and coach NC, like they were young.
• 34:32
  They were very young. And it, I, I always say coaches
• 34:39
  like track coaches especially like we coach movement.
• 34:43
  So it's a lot of things that goes into play from throws,
• 34:46
  jumps, sprints, distance, like we coach movement and being in a
• 34:53
  program light Fort Valley State where you might be working by
• 34:57
  yourself with 30 kids, it's important to just kind of have a
• 35:03
  knowledge and confidence and saying like you coach movement
• 35:07
  like this is how we get faster. And they they definitely jumped
• 35:12
  in head first with that. So it wasn't it wasn't anything
• 35:16
  where I doubted them at the time because I know we run into it a
• 35:19
  lot of Times Now where he is like, oh, such and such is doing
• 35:23
  this. This is what we should be doing.
• 35:25
  But at that point in time, I'm like, yeah, I'll do whatever you
• 35:28
  say, coach. It is.
• 35:30
  It's like that's that's what I took from them being there in
• 35:36
  that space. Like I trusted them as my
• 35:38
  coaches. And you know, I have to do Full
• 35:40
  disclosure here because I coached junior college track for
• 35:43
  one year, one of the greatest years of my life, actually in my
• 35:45
  coaching career. And I did not do what I just
• 35:48
  talked about because I, I'm, I'm having flashbacks of coaching
• 35:53
  indoor weight thrower. Not not a throws guy at all.
• 35:56
  Probably looked like a 1 today, but did not know how to coach
• 35:58
  those at all. And I remember I didn't recruit
• 36:00
  him. Actually, he was a teammate of
• 36:02
  1/4 miler. That was like, hey, man, my, my,
• 36:04
  my guy would like to come to. It was like, sure, I don't know
• 36:06
  how to coach it. We'll be figuring out on our
• 36:08
  own. And I, I remember looking back
• 36:11
  how I tried to coach him in the weight throw and then how weight
• 36:13
  throw is actually done. I was like, Oh my God, what was
• 36:15
  I, what was I doing? Kept it safe, at least at least
• 36:17
  I think I did. But so I made the same mistakes.
• 36:19
  I, I get where you're coming from.
• 36:21
  OK, as you're going through Fort Valley State, I'm not hearing
• 36:26
  you started kind of getting into it here in your, that fifth year
• 36:29
  where you ever had run out of eligibility.
• 36:31
  But I'm not necessarily hearing like, oh, and then I, you know,
• 36:34
  because of all these coaches and they were cool.
• 36:36
  So I was like, maybe I want to be like them.
• 36:37
  I want to be a trick. I'm not hearing you necessarily
• 36:40
  like wanting to become a track coach up to maybe this point in
• 36:43
  this fifth year. Is that fair?
• 36:45
  Yeah, like that's really what it was like as an athlete.
• 36:48
  I wasn't thinking about that. I was still trying to chase this
• 36:51
  pediatrician dream. It's organic chemistry
• 36:55
  nightmare. I'm.
• 36:57
  Stressing over organic chemistry every day.
• 37:00
  And like, yeah, I wasn't thinking about the coaching
• 37:03
  aspect of it. And, and like I said, Coach O
• 37:07
  Kelly, her and her husband, like they when I say they really
• 37:11
  brought me in because they knew that I was pretty much done with
• 37:16
  eligibility. And like, I had a true love for
• 37:20
  track and field. Like I wasn't one of those kids
• 37:23
  that just worried about his event, didn't think to learn or
• 37:27
  look or like really take in what everybody else is doing.
• 37:31
  Like I was locked in on every event.
• 37:36
  Like as a student athlete, like I would really have good
• 37:40
  relationships without throwers, jumpers and sprinters.
• 37:44
  Like I was one of those wide eyed, fascinated people.
• 37:49
  And as I got done with eligibility, Coach O Kelly, like
• 37:54
  she she really pulled me and she was like Wells, like I think you
• 37:59
  have a just genuine love for the sport and like just really
• 38:08
  trying to show me like how much I love the sport at the time.
• 38:14
  And I mean, I was like, yeah, I'm not competing.
• 38:17
  So yeah, I'll be out here learning, like paying attention
• 38:22
  to everything that they do. And they did a great job of
• 38:27
  really putting me in position to be a coach, even though I was
• 38:32
  still of their age on the team, like somebody's my teammates.
• 38:38
  And like they really helped me draw that line between coaching
• 38:42
  student athlete and and really just pay attention to how it
• 38:47
  goes when it comes to training, how it goes when it comes to
• 38:51
  facilitating and and just motivating at this level.
• 38:57
  So. So what kind of activities did
• 38:59
  you do? Because you know, I love your, I
• 39:04
  have this vision of you going and watching your long jumper
• 39:07
  like, you know, it wasn't just, you know, I did my my mile and
• 39:10
  alright, what time's the bus? What time's the four by fours
• 39:11
  when we get out of here? So I can, I can vision that I
• 39:14
  got, you know, this video playing.
• 39:17
  But then when you go into you're really, you're an undergraduate
• 39:21
  coach, you know, kind of a volunteer coach, whatever.
• 39:23
  However you want to term it. I don't see you because we just
• 39:27
  had this discussion. I can't see you going to the
• 39:29
  shop putters and saying, OK, I'm going to run the drills for you
• 39:31
  guys with you guys today or going to the high jumpers.
• 39:33
  Do it. What kind of activities did they
• 39:35
  have you start out doing? So of course distance like I, I
• 39:39
  was working with the cross country, middle distance,
• 39:42
  distance kids at the time, well, teammates at the time.
• 39:48
  And it was more so just getting me to understand the training
• 39:54
  cycles like this is. The time we.
• 39:57
  Should be doing this. This is the time that we should
• 39:59
  be doing that. This is something that we always
• 40:01
  have to keep some type of focus on from a speed, power
• 40:05
  perspective and it was really just bringing me into the basics
• 40:11
  of training. Athletes because I mean, yes, I
• 40:15
  was working directly with the distance kids, but I was there
• 40:19
  for everything from hurdle work because Coach L, Coach O Kelly,
• 40:24
  like she was a hurdle, like she that was her baby and her
• 40:29
  husband was a middle distance 800 runner.
• 40:33
  So they just kind of spread that knowledge out and like having
• 40:40
  another person to kind of help out around the way I, that was
• 40:47
  what they did for me and they did it with a couple of other
• 40:51
  students. I was.
• 40:52
  I was. Going to say what, how did you
• 40:54
  feel about that? Because you know, not everybody
• 40:58
  got asked to help. I'm I'm assuming but they they
• 41:01
  chose you. Like, and that's what really
• 41:05
  pushed me into like, seeing myself as a coach.
• 41:08
  Like, it was a struggle to kind of draw that line, especially as
• 41:13
  I'm in undergrad. And a lot of times like, like,
• 41:17
  well, Wells, you were just out here partying with us like Wes.
• 41:22
  I've said this 100 times, and usually it's in the context of a
• 41:26
  undergrad who goes on to become Aga at the same school.
• 41:29
  And I'm like, because, you know, so I'm like, oh, you know,
• 41:31
  spring semester ends. You were boys playing Xbox on
• 41:34
  Friday nights and then fall comes and now you're Coach
• 41:37
  Wells. Like that transition doesn't
• 41:39
  just happen. Like, like, what do you mean?
• 41:40
  You, you like you said we were just hanging out.
• 41:42
  Now you, you got to whistle like this.
• 41:44
  You know, I I that's why I think GA should not be allowed to be
• 41:48
  at the same school. And, and this undergraduate
• 41:49
  coaching is a little touchy too. Yeah.
• 41:52
  Yeah. So.
• 41:53
  Good. I, I was about to say, like it
• 41:55
  was, it was something that kind of opened my eyes to how my
• 42:01
  teammates saw me, like they respected me enough and.
• 42:06
  That's both sides. That's.
• 42:08
  Right. They gave me grace in being in
• 42:11
  that position. Like they trusted me to help.
• 42:15
  They trusted me to be a person that they can come to from AI
• 42:20
  standpoint, coaching standpoint and like they really helped me
• 42:28
  make that transition. So I don't say it's all me on.
• 42:32
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, yeah, that's but they.
• 42:36
  Well, Coach O'kelly O Kelly, right?
• 42:38
  I want to make sure I'm saying, well, Coach O'kelly demonstrated
• 42:41
  there. It's one of the things that, you
• 42:44
  know, I believe the the real superpower of a coach.
• 42:46
  Like there's so many things that coaches do and that you do that
• 42:48
  are amazing. If I were just to kind of like
• 42:50
  sum it up and one like cute little statement here is, you
• 42:52
  know, the superpower of a coach is you have the ability to see
• 42:55
  something in someone else before they can see in themselves,
• 42:58
  right? So, you know, you've had plenty
• 42:59
  of kids that you've seen you're like, oh man, you're a, you're a
• 43:01
  miler. I know you think you're a AA5K
• 43:04
  kid. No, you're, you're a miler.
• 43:05
  Hey, you know, you think you're a Sprint, you're a hurdler.
• 43:08
  And they go on and become great hurdlers and milers and whatnot.
• 43:11
  And what coach O'kelly did there was she saw you and said, Hey, I
• 43:15
  know you can't see this yet, but you're a coach like you need to,
• 43:18
  like you need to. I, I, I, I got to find out a way
• 43:20
  for you to see that in yourself. And so I'm going to have you go
• 43:23
  work with this group and go do this and go pay attention over
• 43:25
  here. Did did, did they her and her
• 43:27
  husband, did they give you any? I'm going to call it homework.
• 43:32
  And what I mean by that is were there any like, hey, you, you
• 43:33
  need to go read this book or hey, go watch this video from
• 43:36
  this code, anything like that at this point?
• 43:40
  She would always tell me to pay attention to a lot of the meats
• 43:43
  that we went to. Like she very adamant about and
• 43:48
  she was very intentional about us seeing where we're going
• 43:51
  because like she ran at the University of South Carolina.
• 43:55
  So she made sure that we knew the history of a lot of the
• 44:00
  coaches that we were going to run at their tracks.
• 44:03
  And like knowing who Coach Frye was well before, he wouldn't
• 44:09
  even know who I was or name. And I just being a student of
• 44:13
  the sport. So she had a lot of respect for
• 44:15
  other coaches, too. Like the, like, the profession
• 44:18
  of coaching. Yeah.
• 44:20
  That's so cool. I love that.
• 44:22
  OK, so you're in that fifth year finishing out your degree.
• 44:24
  You get a degree in biology. I believe you said that that's
• 44:27
  crazy. That's a that's a tough degree.
• 44:29
  You don't have to be a pre Med organic chemistry guy to still
• 44:32
  that's a tough major. I took biology one O 1 and that
• 44:35
  was like the only class I had to actually study for.
• 44:36
  That's how hard bio one it was for me.
• 44:39
  That was just one O 1 for crying out loud.
• 44:41
  What do you do next? Are you are you when you get
• 44:44
  your degree? Are you committed?
• 44:46
  Like, Oh yeah, I'm going to become a coach.
• 44:47
  Or you still kind of open a little bit.
• 44:50
  So I was pretty much locked into coaching at that point, but I I
• 44:56
  stuck around for another year and a half because I left Fort
• 45:02
  Valley after spring of 2012 and. So you stayed on as a volunteer?
• 45:10
  Yeah, so like they I got a stipend last year.
• 45:13
  I OK, I was. Going to say, So what do you do
• 45:15
  for money? I'm always I, I, I dislike
• 45:18
  volunteer coaches, not the coaches because I'm like, no,
• 45:22
  you should get paid like I don't like this, you know, and I
• 45:25
  can't, I just, I'm so against and tired of hearing, well, I
• 45:29
  don't do it for the money. Do you need to do it for the
• 45:32
  money? I'm sorry.
• 45:33
  You need to support your family and your passions and your
• 45:36
  charity. So stop saying that coaches, I'm
• 45:38
  sorry. You're trying to be very
• 45:40
  altruistic and I get it and I'm not, you know, I'm about to say
• 45:45
  that the world makes the money makes the world go around.
• 45:48
  I'm not saying do it all for the money.
• 45:49
  I'm saying you deserve the money.
• 45:52
  Football coaches deserve the money, baseball coaches track
• 45:54
  coaches. You deserve to get paid what
• 45:56
  you're worth. So stop saying I'm I'm tired of
• 45:58
  tired of hearing that. So what do you do?
• 46:00
  You're maybe get a little stipend, but I mean, how do you
• 46:01
  you still got to survive? There's still rent, there's
• 46:03
  still food. So I was working part time which
• 46:08
  was almost full time at Bass Pro Shops.
• 46:11
  Is that right? I was working in the hunting
• 46:16
  section. I was selling firearms at Bass
• 46:20
  Pro shops were. You.
• 46:21
  So is that a background? I've not heard you saying I have
• 46:23
  a love for hunting or anything or.
• 46:25
  So I actually worked at a summer camp as well.
• 46:29
  Like I went to a summer camp in high school and I ended up
• 46:33
  working like some summers as a college student.
• 46:38
  The FFAFCCCLAI put too many CS, but FCCLA.
• 46:44
  USTFCCCA just had a lot of CS. Camp in Georgia, it was in
• 46:49
  Covington, GA and that kind of opened me up to the whole
• 46:56
  outdoorsy just like the camping and that type thing and I.
• 47:04
  Biology major for Ford Valley state is working at bass pro OK,
• 47:13
  so you're doing that? Yeah, and it was fun.
• 47:19
  I again, Bass Pro Shops, they don't necessarily look and CEO
• 47:24
  this HBCU student over here telling me about this particular
• 47:29
  firearm that I'm looking for. Like it was fun and it kind of
• 47:36
  took care of what it needed to, but that was short lived.
• 47:40
  Like I, I worked at Bass Pro Shops and the summer camp
• 47:44
  through that time of 2012. And yeah, like I, I enjoyed that
• 47:52
  time. It was a growing and learning
• 47:54
  experience, but I did get a opportunity to be a logistics
• 48:00
  manager for a small grocery distribution company in Atlanta.
• 48:05
  What's that? What's that mean?
• 48:08
  I pretty much set up the routes, go look for new stores to put
• 48:13
  our product in and make sure our product got delivered and was
• 48:20
  efficiently delivered week in, week out.
• 48:25
  That seems like a tough job. It was different.
• 48:31
  I remember waking up at 3:00 AM just to be at work at four.
• 48:37
  Wow. We would do a lot of traveling
• 48:42
  from Georgia to Alabama, up into Tennessee, over to South
• 48:48
  Carolina and back to Georgia. Like that was a weekly thing.
• 48:52
  Like I was driving quite a bit. And in that time I, I felt
• 48:59
  myself really just missing track, missing that space.
• 49:03
  And I ended up volunteering at Clayton State University because
• 49:07
  I was living near Clayton at the time, a guy, Clive Caesar, he
• 49:14
  was coaching at the time, assistant coach there and
• 49:21
  backtrack. So at 4 Valley State, we had a
• 49:28
  couple of national champions in the space in my time frame of
• 49:33
  being a student there while I was still running.
• 49:37
  Lindsay Daly, like she was one of those crazy, beastly hurdlers
• 49:43
  at the time and Antoinette Oglesby, AO, she was a very
• 49:53
  dominant triple jumper at the time.
• 49:55
  Like she was a three time national champ, I believe.
• 50:00
  Yeah. So that was my eyes into the
• 50:05
  jumping. So Coach O Kelly made sure that
• 50:08
  I was there for every little bit of that from nationals to her
• 50:14
  training day in, day out. Like that was a space that
• 50:18
  interests me quite a bit outside of distance.
• 50:23
  And I worked a lot with AO and like she gave me quite a bit of
• 50:28
  insight as to what it is that they need as student athletes.
• 50:33
  And now Fast forward to Clayton State.
• 50:38
  There was a triple jumper that my guy comes Caesar had that I,
• 50:43
  I was there to just kind of add in and help with him.
• 50:47
  And she went on to do really well.
• 50:49
  I want to say she was an indoor and outdoor all American and
• 50:52
  triple jump. But I, I've made time for it.
• 50:57
  I've found time for it. I found energy for it, right,
• 51:01
  waking up at 3 and going till probably about four or five in
• 51:05
  the evening, Atlanta traffic like it was, it was something
• 51:11
  that I made time for. So during those couple years
• 51:17
  that I was there, I, I made sure I tapped in with that.
• 51:24
  You clearly had a passion for it because, you know, again, you
• 51:26
  don't wake up at 3:00 in the morning to work another job so
• 51:28
  you can go volunteer at this other job.
• 51:31
  You know, it's, it's, that's the kind of stuff we talk about like
• 51:33
  with charities, right? Like, Oh yeah, I work my job.
• 51:34
  But then at night I go and, you know, do the food bank or, or
• 51:38
  whatnot. And, you know, you go and you do
• 51:39
  coaching track and field, right? So there's clear clearly a
• 51:42
  passion there as you're going through those couple of years,
• 51:46
  you know, Bass Pro Shops and then the logistics with the food
• 51:50
  company. Not that those were necessarily
• 51:53
  like jobs that you would want to do a career in, but you are,
• 51:57
  you're working very hard. You're like, I love how you put
• 51:59
  that. I could see in your face when
• 52:01
  you said that, you know, you found the time and you found the
• 52:04
  energy that that probably was the bigger, the hard thing to
• 52:09
  get over is like, man, I could easily just go home and it's I'm
• 52:12
  tired. I got to get up again at 3:00
• 52:15
  AM, etcetera. Was there any point during this
• 52:18
  time that you were like, you know what, I thought coaching
• 52:21
  was supposed to be my thing, but maybe I'm supposed to go do
• 52:24
  something. I mean, you got, you got a
• 52:26
  freaking body. You got to like, I got a public
• 52:28
  relations degree, buddy. You got a real degree.
• 52:31
  You got a biology degree. Was there ever any time during
• 52:34
  this time span where you're like, you know, maybe I need to
• 52:35
  go figure out how to put my degree in action?
• 52:38
  So, and that's what actually brought me back to coaching.
• 52:42
  Like I was like, I need to go to more school.
• 52:47
  Like I needed another degree to add on to a biology degree.
• 52:52
  Like, it is plenty of things that's dealing with biology, but
• 52:57
  it's so specialized now. Like nobody's just looking for a
• 53:00
  biology degree. Got it.
• 53:01
  Makes sense? It's the step stool to get into
• 53:04
  the specialized master's. Which brings me to Kentucky
• 53:10
  State University, where my girl, Fatima Shabazz, she was coaching
• 53:16
  at the time, Coach Von Smith, he was the head coach at the time.
• 53:22
  Like, they gave me the opportunity to come up and be a
• 53:25
  grad assistant. Granted, Kentucky State really
• 53:30
  didn't have anything from a master standpoint that would tie
• 53:34
  in with a bachelor's in biology. So I just this isn't good to
• 53:41
  say, but I I definitely jumped into a grad program really like
• 53:46
  with no intention of like this is what I want to do.
• 53:50
  Yeah, same dude. When when I went to go to Troy
• 53:53
  and and, you know, I was going to be a that was my whole thing.
• 53:55
  I'm going to be a coach. And I knew I wasn't smart enough
• 53:58
  to get a biology degree, so I was like, all right, I don't
• 54:01
  necessarily need a, you know what you'd say, a stereotypical
• 54:04
  degree to become a coach, biology kines, all those kind of
• 54:06
  things, right? I was like, I just need a
• 54:07
  degree. I'll need a degree to get a
• 54:09
  college job. And so I literally went down the
• 54:11
  list of the majors and I was like, oh, OK, I'm trying to find
• 54:16
  the easiest one. I got the PEI was like, OK, and
• 54:18
  I can, you know, I can become a PE teacher, right?
• 54:20
  And then I got the public relations and I was like, oh,
• 54:23
  wait a minute, public relations. That's like, come on.
• 54:28
  That's literally how I picked my degree.
• 54:29
  But so there's no shame in that at all?
• 54:32
  Yeah, not at all. Yeah, man.
• 54:34
  But Fatima Shabazz, she reached out to me in July of 2014 and
• 54:43
  like at that point, like I was really at the end, like at my
• 54:47
  wits end with working that logistics.
• 54:50
  Yeah, something's got to change. And like, when she reached out
• 54:54
  to me, I was like, all right, I'm going to figure it out.
• 54:58
  Like, let's do this. I'm going to do what I got to,
• 55:01
  to be in Frankfort, KY in August.
• 55:05
  And sure enough, like she was amazing because Smith, they were
• 55:11
  amazing about making me feel welcome and like really getting
• 55:15
  me in that space. Experienced my lowest rent for a
• 55:20
  one bedroom apartment in all of my life and I know we'll never
• 55:24
  experience that again. Like 350 for a furnished
• 55:28
  bedroom, one bedroom apartment. And sharing, Sharing with 10
• 55:32
  other people, right? No dude, it was a legit one
• 55:36
  bedroom apartment and it was close to downtown Frankfurt.
• 55:40
  Like that was one of the things that just kind of, this ain't so
• 55:46
  bad, yeah. So first of all, I have to give
• 55:49
  a shout out Fatima Shabazz Gill connections podcast along.
• 55:52
  So if you're interested in her story, go listen to her episode
• 55:55
  here on the podcast. So what I'm trying to like, I'm
• 55:58
  trying to put myself in Fatima and Von's shoes here of like,
• 56:01
  OK, we've invited this guy to come become Aga force.
• 56:04
  So he was a distance runner, but he's got some jumps experience
• 56:09
  cut. Like what?
• 56:11
  What do they bring you in to do? Like, I feel, I don't know, it
• 56:13
  almost feels like you could get lost, you know what I'm saying?
• 56:16
  What do you actually do there? Fatima, she was like, she
• 56:21
  competed like right as I finished competing.
• 56:25
  So she saw me helping Coach O Kelly quite a bit and she was
• 56:31
  like, yeah, we just need another person because she was handling
• 56:38
  throws at the time. She was working with long
• 56:40
  distance cross country and Coach Smith was working with sprint's
• 56:44
  hurdles, jumps. And at that point they, well,
• 56:50
  they definitely knew I wanted to be in coaching and I was willing
• 56:54
  to be wherever was needed. As I came up, team was like, all
• 57:00
  right, we're going to team up with distance and like she'll
• 57:03
  let me have middle distance. And Coach Smith was like,
• 57:08
  whatever with jumps, like let's make it work.
• 57:12
  And we definitely made it work. Like that was probably the
• 57:19
  funnest time as a coach because of the people.
• 57:24
  Like the people really made it what it was.
• 57:27
  At Frankfort. In Frankfort, KY, the coaching
• 57:32
  staff or the other sports were pretty young as well.
• 57:36
  So like we had a nice little community amongst ourselves and
• 57:41
  we made it made, we made it fun. And I was actually coaching my
• 57:49
  guy, my guy, Kyron Broussard, he was a national qualifier in the
• 57:55
  800. And like, that was the highlight
• 57:59
  of my time from a coaching perspective there.
• 58:05
  But we, we ain't we, we have fun together.
• 58:08
  I'll say that any. We talk a lot about coaching
• 58:12
  education on this podcast, mainly because I, I'm a huge
• 58:15
  advocate of coaching education and I, I, I think it puts you in
• 58:19
  education in two forms. One is formal, so like
• 58:22
  USATFUSTFCCA, Altus and one informal being peer-to-peer and
• 58:27
  mentors and things like that. And you mentioned some, you
• 58:31
  know, peers and mentors that you've reached out.
• 58:33
  Were you doing any form like as you're going through this grad
• 58:36
  program there at Kentucky State, any formal coaching education,
• 58:39
  any USATF level 1 or anything at the at this point?
• 58:42
  So I actually did USATF Level 1 while I was at Fort Valley
• 58:47
  State. Coach O Kelly, she was like,
• 58:51
  yeah, just go ahead. Like, it's a good thing to kind
• 58:53
  of just get the basics, yeah. Absolutely.
• 58:56
  And I did it, and that was cool. Where'd you Do you remember
• 59:00
  where the school was? We did it in Atlanta.
• 59:02
  I don't remember exactly where do.
• 59:06
  You remember any teachers that you had?
• 59:08
  Lauren C Grade. Lauren was my level 1 as well.
• 59:13
  Yeah, like so good. That was my initial jump into
• 59:20
  coaching education. Like I really didn't look that
• 59:25
  way because of, I guess how we were coaching.
• 59:29
  Like I was like, because we had that cover so much and I really
• 59:35
  just use my circle, use the people around me.
• 59:40
  But I will say at Kentucky State, that was my first time
• 59:44
  going to the USATUSTFCCCA coaching convention.
• 59:50
  Oh yeah. And that really opened my eyes
• 59:54
  to like, oh, it's a lot of people that's out here giving
• 59:58
  out knowledge. So that that first year that I
• 1:00:04
  was there, we went and I want to say it was, I think it was
• 1:00:09
  Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ. But I found myself just really
• 1:00:19
  submerged and just all of these coaches giving out knowledge.
• 1:00:23
  Things that would help me directly in the events that I'm
• 1:00:26
  working on. Do you remember a specific topic
• 1:00:30
  or person that kind of like like, like when I first got into
• 1:00:34
  coaching, I went to AI was coaching hurdles and I went to a
• 1:00:39
  clinic down at Indiana University and the presenter,
• 1:00:42
  Marshall Goss, now retired former head coach in Indiana,
• 1:00:45
  talked about hurdles and, you know, beginning hurdle coaching.
• 1:00:48
  And I remember like it was like, you know, you've read in the
• 1:00:52
  Bible, maybe, you know, scales fall off your eyes.
• 1:00:54
  It was like, oh, I've been coaching with a bag over my
• 1:00:57
  head. Like I've been blind.
• 1:00:59
  And now I get like it made so much, even though it was
• 1:01:03
  obviously very radical to how I was coaching.
• 1:01:05
  I was coaching extremely incorrectly, by the way, but it
• 1:01:08
  changed my life. It was like, oh, there's an
• 1:01:10
  actual like way to like, there's a like, there's actual mechanics
• 1:01:14
  to how you coach, right. Do you remember well, there was
• 1:01:17
  a speaker or a topic that you that like almost, you know, kind
• 1:01:20
  of blew your mind like, Oh my goodness, this makes so much
• 1:01:24
  sense. Anything like that?
• 1:01:26
  I'm going to say no, but I will say one thing that like really
• 1:01:32
  opened my eyes were was I think because he he the young guys
• 1:01:40
  Olympia is it Akron, the coach Akron who had the 800 runner?
• 1:01:47
  What's his face if? You wouldn't have said that.
• 1:01:50
  I knew exactly his name. I can see his face.
• 1:01:52
  Yes. Great dude, yeah.
• 1:01:55
  But sitting in, listening to his symposium like it, it gave
• 1:02:03
  validation to what Coach O Kelly had put me on track for.
• 1:02:09
  Just seeing the amount of work. This is when we should do this,
• 1:02:14
  this, these are the type of workouts that we should be doing
• 1:02:16
  here. It gave a sense of like, OK.
• 1:02:20
  I think that is so important most of the times in the way I
• 1:02:24
  even I phrase that question. We think about that coaching
• 1:02:28
  education, we decide the way I said it's like, oh, I had no
• 1:02:30
  clue. And then I saw this was like, Oh
• 1:02:31
  my God. But there is maybe equally
• 1:02:36
  positivity when you're like, you know, I'm just not, yeah, I know
• 1:02:39
  I'm doing it or I was taught this way, but I'm not sure.
• 1:02:42
  And so there's there's a lack of confidence and you know, you're
• 1:02:45
  not coaching to your full strength if you're coaching out
• 1:02:47
  of lack of confidence. And so there is something about
• 1:02:50
  that strength of like, oh, wait a minute, this this guy or gal
• 1:02:53
  has done it many times. And wait a minute, they're doing
• 1:02:56
  what I'm doing that maybe there's some small tweaks in
• 1:02:58
  there. But you know, it's like, oh,
• 1:02:59
  wait a minute. That's what we oh, it's almost
• 1:03:03
  like relief, right? It's like, oh.
• 1:03:06
  Right. I, you know, for, for me, I'd be
• 1:03:08
  like, I'm not an idiot, OK, cool, cool, cool.
• 1:03:11
  You know. So I think that's equally
• 1:03:14
  important to have that validation.
• 1:03:15
  So now that you could coach more confidently.
• 1:03:18
  Honestly, and during that time, like that's when I was coaching
• 1:03:25
  the young man Kyra Broussard. And for him, like that was the
• 1:03:30
  first training program from fall through the spring where I coach
• 1:03:37
  somebody that went to the national level or getting past
• 1:03:42
  conference for a national level. And like Bruce Kyron, he was a
• 1:03:51
  pivotal athlete for me as a coach.
• 1:03:54
  Like again, we're not too far in age like, but he's trusting me
• 1:04:01
  to help out with what he's got going on and just seeing how he
• 1:04:08
  was able to get up there, run his 149 at the time, which would
• 1:04:12
  make make it the nationals. Not anymore, but I.
• 1:04:16
  Just want to say not anymore. That's what's crazy, yeah.
• 1:04:19
  At the time, man, yeah. Like I was it.
• 1:04:23
  It was a sense of validation, like hearing that symposium and
• 1:04:27
  like just seeing a lot of the things that I.
• 1:04:30
  Love that. Coach O Kelly put me on track to
• 1:04:33
  watch out for, pay attention to gauge this, make sure it fits
• 1:04:38
  the athlete with this. And like that was that was a big
• 1:04:43
  like, OK, I'm, I'm, I'm where I'm supposed to be.
• 1:04:48
  We get on themes through the podcast where it'll go through
• 1:04:51
  several episodes, you know, or we'll talk about different
• 1:04:53
  things. I think that that might be a
• 1:04:56
  theme that we explore here for the next couple of episodes with
• 1:04:59
  different people of coaching from confidence.
• 1:05:02
  And if you know, and you're by the way, you know, it takes a
• 1:05:06
  lot of humility to be able to save things like, well, you
• 1:05:08
  know, I wasn't really sure and think so.
• 1:05:10
  Appreciate your, you know, authenticity and truthfulness
• 1:05:13
  here, but if we can admit to ourselves like, you know,
• 1:05:15
  sometimes or maybe right now, I'm like, I'm not that
• 1:05:18
  confident, you know, 18 to 22 year olds in the college side
• 1:05:22
  here, they're not dumb. They can sense those things,
• 1:05:25
  right. So there's, you're maybe not
• 1:05:27
  able to convey all that you're trying to convey when you're
• 1:05:32
  almost hesitant, You know, you're, you're second guessing
• 1:05:34
  yourself. There's some confidence parts
• 1:05:36
  of, of actually coaching as well.
• 1:05:38
  So I, I, I love that. I love that for you.
• 1:05:40
  Yeah, that's so cool. So you what?
• 1:05:43
  What did you end up getting your masters in there at Kentucky
• 1:05:45
  State? So I actually didn't finish.
• 1:05:47
  Oh, is that right? You're, you're a grad.
• 1:05:49
  Drop out a little bit. So that first year, because I
• 1:05:53
  was there for two years, that first year I was a grad
• 1:05:58
  assistant in GA and then that next year they found a way for
• 1:06:03
  them to pay me. Get out of here.
• 1:06:06
  That's that's not drop out. That's smart.
• 1:06:09
  Good for you. Yeah, like I was working as A
• 1:06:13
  and it's been coach that second. Year and I'm sure rolling in it.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah, like I was, I was, I was enjoying that experience.
• 1:06:24
  Let me say it a different way. And I'm sure just making tons of
• 1:06:27
  money. Yeah.
• 1:06:29
  Yeah, OK, That's what I meant. When you're like, yeah.
• 1:06:31
  And I was like, wait a minute, I.
• 1:06:34
  Mean with 350 rent like. Oh, yeah, that's a good point.
• 1:06:38
  No, that's, that's a good point. That's a good point.
• 1:06:40
  Good point. I I can I can live in Frankfurt,
• 1:06:43
  Kentucky. That's not a bad place.
• 1:06:45
  Actually, I've been there a few times.
• 1:06:46
  That's that's a good point. So this so you get picked up as
• 1:06:50
  a first of all, I truly believe, and we all hear Gil believe, you
• 1:06:53
  know, healthy things grow so that the program was able to
• 1:06:56
  hire full time another coach. That is I love that.
• 1:07:00
  Great for Kentucky State man Holy cow, that's great for our
• 1:07:02
  sport. It's great for those athletes
• 1:07:04
  and and great for you as well. So I love hearing that.
• 1:07:07
  And then like there was a bit of transition.
• 1:07:11
  Coach Von Smith was out my second year and that's when they
• 1:07:15
  brought in Olympian Tori Edwards.
• 1:07:18
  And she added another level of just insight and perspective as
• 1:07:26
  a world class athlete coming into this small school.
• 1:07:32
  And she, she helped with my confidence a lot too, because
• 1:07:36
  she was like, yeah, well, it's like, you know what you're
• 1:07:39
  doing, go ahead, you're good. Like she, she helped a lot with
• 1:07:44
  like just really standing on what I've been doing.
• 1:07:48
  And yeah, like that was a fun time as well.
• 1:07:53
  Yeah, What's that like? So I got to, you know, my job
• 1:07:59
  here, I'm so lucky. I meet amazing athlete, you
• 1:08:02
  know, it's just, it's so cool sometimes, you know, when I gold
• 1:08:06
  medalist, you know, it's like, Oh my.
• 1:08:08
  And I'm like, oh, how do you know who the world I am?
• 1:08:10
  Well, this past week, earlier this week, I was in Round Rock,
• 1:08:13
  TX for the Texas high school AD convention.
• 1:08:16
  And it literally in the last hour, like we're going to pack
• 1:08:19
  up here in the next hour so that the convention's over, right?
• 1:08:21
  This young lady comes up and she's like, Oh, you know, I, we
• 1:08:26
  love Gil. We, you know, where I'm at, we
• 1:08:28
  choose all Gil blah, blah, blah. It's like, oh man, that's so
• 1:08:30
  cool. Thank you.
• 1:08:31
  And I look at her name tag and you might be too young for this.
• 1:08:34
  Let's see. We'll do a little test here.
• 1:08:36
  Her name tag says Christy Gaines.
• 1:08:39
  It sounds very familiar living. No, no, no, Google.
• 1:08:43
  I'll, I'll tell you, I'll spoil it.
• 1:08:44
  So I look at I go, are you the Christy Gaines?
• 1:08:49
  And she goes, yeah, I am. So Christy was a you probably
• 1:08:53
  can't count the number of times all Americans at Stanford and
• 1:08:55
  then goes on to win the gold medal and many golds and silvers
• 1:08:59
  and world champs and Olympics and four by ones.
• 1:09:01
  And so I mean she was one of the fastest Americans ever may still
• 1:09:05
  be in I I meant to look it up. Maybe still in the top ten, if
• 1:09:08
  not top 10, top 20 women. 1086 was her PR.
• 1:09:14
  Yeah, exactly right, right, She said.
• 1:09:15
  That's like, oh, I looked at my my teammate on the basketball
• 1:09:19
  side was with me and so he doesn't really know track.
• 1:09:21
  And I go, dude, I go. She ran faster than a lot of
• 1:09:24
  actually fast guys. You know, like.
• 1:09:26
  There's the fast guys that would not have beaten her.
• 1:09:28
  You know, it's like she was legit.
• 1:09:31
  So it's always kind of cool when someone at that level and Tori
• 1:09:34
  Edwards, I mean, you're talking about that level.
• 1:09:36
  What did you take away from your time with her?
• 1:09:40
  Like, you know, she has an experience that none of us are
• 1:09:43
  ever going to, you know, say I always talk about in our sport,
• 1:09:46
  we get to meet a lot. You've met lots of Olympians,
• 1:09:48
  right? But there's still this many
• 1:09:51
  Olympians in the world, right? I mean, it's just no one makes
• 1:09:53
  the Olympic team. Right, you know what?
• 1:09:55
  I'm. Saying what was it?
• 1:09:56
  What did you learn from her experiences being on her staff?
• 1:09:59
  Was there, I don't even want to put you on, just was there
• 1:10:03
  anything extras like, oh, you know what?
• 1:10:05
  I I and this is not dissing other people, but I didn't get
• 1:10:07
  this from those guys or gals before.
• 1:10:09
  No, no, no, right this. Level or something?
• 1:10:12
  So she really instilled in us that like everybody deserves a
• 1:10:20
  level of coaching, a level of care, a level of just attention
• 1:10:26
  in order to to get to where they're trying to go.
• 1:10:29
  Like she knows how hard she worked to get to where she was.
• 1:10:34
  And for her to, I'm not even going to say downsize it, but
• 1:10:39
  bring it to the level of these student athletes that probably
• 1:10:43
  won't ever run as fast as she has run.
• 1:10:46
  But like she made sure that everybody saw it for what it
• 1:10:51
  was. Like this is track and field.
• 1:10:53
  Like we are here to get faster. Like in everybody's progress is
• 1:10:58
  different. So you don't steer anybody away
• 1:11:02
  in that space. Yeah, that that's amazing
• 1:11:06
  because, you know, a little bit of a stereotype, but as someone
• 1:11:10
  who's such an elite athlete, I could have seen her come and
• 1:11:14
  say, hey, we don't have time to mess with the bottom third here.
• 1:11:18
  Guys like we need to take the guys and gals that are fast now
• 1:11:20
  and make them faster and we can only really work with elites or
• 1:11:23
  whatever, blah blah. And been like, oh, you know,
• 1:11:25
  she's an elite. I guess I can understand her
• 1:11:28
  experience, you know, but it was that sounds like the opposite of
• 1:11:30
  like, Oh no, no, we everybody needs an A positive experience
• 1:11:34
  here. And this is what like we have to
• 1:11:37
  do at the school, like Kentucky State, they, they've had their
• 1:11:41
  troubles as an institution. But from the athletic
• 1:11:44
  standpoint, it brought more structure for me coming from
• 1:11:49
  Fort Valley. Like Fatima, she she helped out
• 1:11:55
  a lot when it came to like, Oh yeah, this is what we do to
• 1:11:58
  cover this. This is the fundraising we do
• 1:12:01
  for this. This is how we get this handled
• 1:12:05
  so we can travel here. So a lot from the administrative
• 1:12:08
  side was a bit more structured than Fort Valley.
• 1:12:14
  And like, bringing Tori in, like, she, she, she just kind of
• 1:12:22
  was icing on the cake because I was only there for a year during
• 1:12:26
  her time. And like she again, it was
• 1:12:31
  validation and what I was doing What like started at Fort Valley
• 1:12:36
  State. Did you ever at practice, like,
• 1:12:38
  you know, you guys are kind of near the end and, you know,
• 1:12:41
  maybe just milling around, you ever look at it like, hey man,
• 1:12:42
  let's race. I think I can beat you.
• 1:12:46
  Coach Edwards, Tori. No, never.
• 1:12:49
  Like even if she wasn't in her tip top shape.
• 1:12:53
  I'm not that person like man, my my, my student athletes now
• 1:12:59
  coach Wells, you need to get up and do I'm like, First off, I've
• 1:13:02
  seen off the Achilles. I no offense to anybody that's
• 1:13:10
  out there with, but I I've seen quite a fair share of injuries.
• 1:13:15
  Oh yeah, when when, when I see on Twitter when they talk about
• 1:13:19
  these coaches, 4 by ones. I'm like, you guys are gals.
• 1:13:22
  You got to quit that. That's in the past.
• 1:13:24
  Quit living in the past, man. You better live in the present.
• 1:13:27
  And even if you do, you have to go through the same warm up that
• 1:13:31
  you put in your team. I saw some tweet the other day
• 1:13:36
  about like a reminder to coaches, like, hey, if you're
• 1:13:39
  going to demonstrate for your athletes, you also need to warm.
• 1:13:42
  Like don't forget that. That's like you warm your kids
• 1:13:44
  up for a reason. So therefore you also, if you're
• 1:13:46
  going to do something athletic, need to be warmed.
• 1:13:49
  Up like during that time frame, though I will say that first
• 1:13:54
  year that I was at Kentucky, after that, like spring season,
• 1:14:01
  couple other athletes, they were like, OK Wells, you get a little
• 1:14:04
  big man. And I took that to heart, I will
• 1:14:09
  say from May 2013, throughout my time at Kentucky State, like I
• 1:14:18
  was really, really working out eating like I, I said I was
• 1:14:22
  going to have a six pack by the time y'all come back in the
• 1:14:24
  fall. And I I meant that.
• 1:14:26
  Now that that would be a different definition between you
• 1:14:30
  and I there by the way, in that sentence now you're you're a
• 1:14:33
  distance background. You haven't gone crazy.
• 1:14:35
  You haven't done a marathon yet? Have.
• 1:14:36
  You. Oh, no.
• 1:14:37
  OK. All right.
• 1:14:38
  That's my judgement of like how insane someone is, like, yeah,
• 1:14:41
  you know, so I did. I was doing 5K, so I decided to
• 1:14:44
  do a marathon. I'm like bro, get out of here
• 1:14:45
  here man, that's crazy. Yeah, OK.
• 1:14:48
  I will say undergrad kind of scarred me with that because as
• 1:14:52
  an undergrad at Fort Valley State, at our conference
• 1:14:57
  championships, I ran the 1500 prelim, final, steeplechase,
• 1:15:03
  5K10K, all in the same weekend. I'm like, I'm OK, y'all?
• 1:15:07
  I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't need to do that.
• 1:15:11
  Here's the sad part. A marathon is still like 10
• 1:15:13
  times that much. That's what exactly.
• 1:15:14
  So I, I, yeah, I have no desire. You mentioned you were there for
• 1:15:19
  a year under coach Tory Edwards. Where did we go next and why so?
• 1:15:25
  Coach Pricey actually hit me up. He was like, yeah man.
• 1:15:29
  My guy at Morgan State has a assistant coach position open
• 1:15:35
  and interview for the position in August of 2014 and September
• 1:15:43
  1. September 5 I guess I was in
• 1:15:46
  Baltimore, MD assistant coach at Morgan State University.
• 1:15:51
  With Neville Hodge, yeah. Yes.
• 1:15:54
  Legacy Legend. Yeah, big time.
• 1:15:56
  Like, I didn't realize how much of A legacy until I got there
• 1:15:59
  and like, really was in it. I was like, Oh my goodness.
• 1:16:03
  So I'm noticing A trend and I was wondering where you went
• 1:16:06
  next to see if the trend continued.
• 1:16:07
  And it does. And I've had many, many Richie
• 1:16:13
  Bean, Lamont Vaughn, oh gosh, a couple more escaping me.
• 1:16:19
  Great coaches from the HBCU level.
• 1:16:22
  Oh, Pierce Hamptons coach. So I have a lot of respect and
• 1:16:30
  admiration for the HBCUS. You, your HBCU all the way.
• 1:16:35
  Is this conscious or unconscious?
• 1:16:38
  You know what I mean when I say that like, you know, you're
• 1:16:40
  conscious of all decisions, but like, are you purposely so
• 1:16:43
  attracted and attractive to HBCUS or is it just the way it's
• 1:16:47
  worked so far? So I went to HBCU because I
• 1:16:51
  wanted to go for to HBCU for the history behind it, for the, the,
• 1:16:57
  the foundation of it. And naturally, like I'm around
• 1:17:03
  more of the HBCU schools from a coaching standpoint and they put
• 1:17:07
  me in quite a few directions. So being at Fort Valley State as
• 1:17:13
  a student athlete, my coaches at the time.
• 1:17:17
  So Coach Price, he went on to South Carolina State.
• 1:17:21
  Coach Coop went on to Savannah State, later South Carolina
• 1:17:25
  State and put them couldn't like I have a genuine love for HBC
• 1:17:33
  U's and it really became that trend as I love Kentucky State.
• 1:17:42
  Like going to Morgan State. I didn't know how much history
• 1:17:46
  was behind the institution, behind track and field at the
• 1:17:51
  school at the time. I was just excited for a new
• 1:17:56
  job, a full time job, benefits at AD one school and like it
• 1:18:04
  took me really getting there to dive into like, OK, Wells, this
• 1:18:10
  is your third HBCU. Like this is quite a bit of a
• 1:18:16
  trend, but I I've loved it from top to bottom, man.
• 1:18:21
  Do you think so high school coaches get lumped together and
• 1:18:30
  they're told like, hey, you can't coach college.
• 1:18:32
  These these are big swaths. Obviously they're high school
• 1:18:36
  coaches that go on to coach college.
• 1:18:37
  And there's college coaches who hire high school coaches, but
• 1:18:40
  overall they have a stigmatism that they can't coach college
• 1:18:43
  because they don't know how to recruit or right.
• 1:18:46
  That's usually the biggest one. And then, you know, there's a
• 1:18:48
  couple of minor things. Is there a stigma?
• 1:18:52
  I don't know this actually. I'm not normally.
• 1:18:55
  Normally my questions are leading because I already know
• 1:18:56
  the answer kind of, you know, but I actually don't know this.
• 1:18:59
  Is there a stigmatism of HBCU coaches?
• 1:19:04
  Like are you know what I mean? Does that make sense when I say
• 1:19:08
  that like, because, because I think of some of the guys now
• 1:19:10
  that I'm thinking about, like you mentioned Cooper and I was
• 1:19:12
  like, Oh yeah, South Carolina State and then Bethune and, and
• 1:19:16
  I'm thinking about Coach G, you know, now back at at FAMU and I
• 1:19:20
  met him when he was at Bethune. And I'm wondering, is there a
• 1:19:24
  stigmatism against HBCU coaches in the college Track World?
• 1:19:29
  I can't speak for what other people see as far as HBCU
• 1:19:35
  coaches, yeah. I'm asking your.
• 1:19:38
  Experience and this is the thing, like I know for a fact
• 1:19:41
  that we can coach alongside the best of them.
• 1:19:46
  Of course. And I personally take it like
• 1:19:52
  being at a HBCU, like I know how I recruit for the institution.
• 1:19:59
  I know what. The institution that I chose had
• 1:20:02
  an impact on my experience, what I see, how I see it, and that's
• 1:20:10
  what I want people to understand.
• 1:20:13
  Like people choose HBC US because that's where they're
• 1:20:16
  going to go. And that's not giving up
• 1:20:20
  anything from a coaching standpoint because, as you name
• 1:20:25
  is, quite a few qualified coaches.
• 1:20:27
  Plenty across. The board and it's rich history
• 1:20:31
  and HBCU track and field. So I, I mean, I hold that high
• 1:20:38
  on my shoulder as far as coaching.
• 1:20:40
  What I'm hearing you say and I love it, you're you're not
• 1:20:44
  saying I'm stuck in HBCU. I'm hearing you saying I choose
• 1:20:50
  HBC from undergrad grad jobs like this is part of your like,
• 1:20:57
  like there are there are plenty of high school coaches.
• 1:21:00
  When I used to coach, I used to teach level ones and I used to
• 1:21:03
  say the number one question I got from high school coaches in
• 1:21:07
  level ones was how do I coach college?
• 1:21:08
  And I'm always like, maybe you don't, you know, it's not, it's
• 1:21:11
  not maybe what you think it is. It's a great job, but I mean,
• 1:21:13
  it's not, you know, magic and that's not utopia.
• 1:21:16
  And but there's plenty of high school coaches that would be
• 1:21:18
  like, I would never, I don't want to coach college.
• 1:21:20
  I love coaching high school. There are plenty of D3 coaches
• 1:21:24
  that that I've met that are like, Oh, I don't this aspire to
• 1:21:28
  be D1. I have the best life.
• 1:21:30
  I'm in the right place. Juku coaches, man, why would I?
• 1:21:33
  Why would I go to a four year? I've got it made.
• 1:21:35
  This is what I'm hearing you say.
• 1:21:38
  I'm not stuck. HBCUI choose HBCUS.
• 1:21:43
  Correct. I love that.
• 1:21:45
  I and the older I got, the more I realized like this is a space
• 1:21:55
  that I'm able to help people grow.
• 1:21:58
  I mean, because I mean, not everyone is going to get the
• 1:22:02
  opportunity for the power for in a lot of times HBC us are
• 1:22:07
  stepping stones. And I want anybody that has come
• 1:22:14
  and been an athlete, has worked with us, has been with us as an
• 1:22:18
  institution or any institution that I've been at.
• 1:22:23
  I'd like to know like this is a place that you can learn and do
• 1:22:26
  everything that you think might not be accessible here.
• 1:22:32
  Like that's that's. People who think the opposite of
• 1:22:35
  that are blind. I was another HBC coach.
• 1:22:41
  I had good friend Chris McCoy, Arkansas, Pine Bluff.
• 1:22:44
  I was just at Texas A&M for West regions and they just came in
• 1:22:48
  second, but behind A and MI think I ran 38 what 49 or
• 1:22:52
  something like that. I literally walked up to the
• 1:22:54
  track right as the heat was started and I and I texted him
• 1:22:56
  right after and I was like, dude, like a great job seeing or
• 1:23:00
  like unbelievable, like people, people who think that they're
• 1:23:05
  putting down HPCU are really just missing.
• 1:23:08
  What did they say? Missing the forest for the trees
• 1:23:10
  or whatever. They're just there's some other
• 1:23:11
  things going on. I think if they're putting down,
• 1:23:14
  I think if coach Pierce and I'm like, well, you know, you would
• 1:23:18
  never pull him out of the Hampton, the 757.
• 1:23:21
  He's I mean that guy just bleeds Virginia Beach area Norfolk, you
• 1:23:25
  know, that's that whole area. That's his home.
• 1:23:27
  You would it don't matter if the I truly think it's like whatever
• 1:23:30
  the biggest job in our coaching profession is open.
• 1:23:33
  I don't think he would take it because he had to leave and he
• 1:23:34
  he just loves that place bleeds him.
• 1:23:37
  So, so I love hearing. I appreciate you having that
• 1:23:40
  conversation. With me, and I'll say this, like
• 1:23:42
  looking at a lot of the coaching positions, the head coaches like
• 1:23:48
  it's a lot of HBCU coaches that have been head coach at their
• 1:23:53
  schools for a long time. Like if you look at Alabama
• 1:23:57
  State, if you look at Morgan State, if you look at Hampton
• 1:24:02
  Coppin State, like these coaches choose to be there and.
• 1:24:06
  They. Of where they are.
• 1:24:08
  That's a great point. I it's getting hard to see those
• 1:24:12
  like legacy coaching, like in the track and field as a whole.
• 1:24:20
  One of my favorite conversations of all three hundred that I've
• 1:24:23
  ever had is Richie Bean. I mean, I just love that dude.
• 1:24:26
  And my God, the guy needs to grow fingers to have more for
• 1:24:30
  his rings. It's unbelievable the legacy he
• 1:24:32
  has. So talk about legacy and legend.
• 1:24:34
  So you go to Morgan State. What do you learn from coach?
• 1:24:39
  I mean, come on, Dude's been around forever.
• 1:24:41
  I feel like he's still going to be around forever.
• 1:24:43
  He's had so many amazing athletes and produced a lot of
• 1:24:47
  amazing teams. What do you learn?
• 1:24:49
  Do you, do you? Let me ask you this way.
• 1:24:51
  When you go there, do you realize the kind of special
• 1:24:56
  treat you have? You got a guy in front.
• 1:24:57
  You've had other great mentors around you.
• 1:25:00
  But Eva Hodge, you know, just another step there.
• 1:25:04
  Did you realize the opportunity you had to learn from him or did
• 1:25:08
  you maybe you were maybe a little blind to his history.
• 1:25:10
  Tell tell me about. That, oh, I was very blind to
• 1:25:12
  his history. Like I said, when I when I got
• 1:25:15
  to Morgan, I quickly realized like, oh, he is him.
• 1:25:20
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:25:21
  Oregon State. Quick learner could.
• 1:25:23
  And my time in Baltimore, I'll tell anybody it was tough just
• 1:25:30
  because I've always been in the South, for one.
• 1:25:36
  I've always been in rural areas like I it was a big transition
• 1:25:44
  from this environment as a whole.
• 1:25:46
  You probably paid more than 350 for rent.
• 1:25:48
  Oh, God, yes. And yeah, Like it was, it was
• 1:25:54
  tough. Yeah, I'll say that from a
• 1:25:56
  personal slam plane. But going to the Division One
• 1:26:01
  level, I saw how much more of a business it was.
• 1:26:06
  It wasn't my favorite, but just seeing how the business side of
• 1:26:13
  things work. Now, one thing that I I credit
• 1:26:18
  Coach Hodge for as far as giving me insight is how to work and
• 1:26:26
  create facilities like because the facility that's there is
• 1:26:33
  phenomenal and it was already phenomenal before.
• 1:26:37
  They just had that upgrade. And Coach Hodge, he took me with
• 1:26:43
  him when he went to tour the Bynan facility and they were
• 1:26:50
  trying to get Morgan State and Coach Hodge talk John Bynan into
• 1:26:57
  getting him. I want to say 3 lanes the length
• 1:27:01
  of our gym at the time that would go under our stands that
• 1:27:08
  roll out. And like in my mind, I was like
• 1:27:12
  this man. He thinks from a space of like
• 1:27:17
  we can make use of this, but from a logistics standpoint with
• 1:27:24
  facilities and just what to look for when you are trying to
• 1:27:28
  create a facility, renovate a facility, build a facility, like
• 1:27:32
  he was very, very, very insightful on that.
• 1:27:36
  That's cool. Working with him, that was the
• 1:27:39
  first time I worked with any type of meat management.
• 1:27:43
  Yeah. That was that was an experience
• 1:27:49
  I saw how much or how little coaching that you do when you
• 1:27:52
  are running a meet. Yep.
• 1:27:59
  But it was it was eye opening. I'll leave it at that.
• 1:28:05
  Yeah, yeah. So you bring up a great point.
• 1:28:12
  We tend to think, we tend to think about what we think about
• 1:28:16
  the school or the program when we think about other jobs,
• 1:28:20
  right? And so, you know, when you talk
• 1:28:21
  about Morgan State and Neville Hodge, you know, from the
• 1:28:23
  outside you're like, oh man, who would not want to go there?
• 1:28:26
  Who would not want to learn under Coach Hodge and blah,
• 1:28:29
  blah, blah. But there are so many factors
• 1:28:32
  into the jobs you take, family location, almost the cost or
• 1:28:38
  price, but salary, you know, those kind of things.
• 1:28:41
  I hear you. I like I hear it in your voice
• 1:28:44
  about struggling with Baltimore. So it doesn't sound.
• 1:28:47
  And you know, spoiler alert, you're not, you're not there
• 1:28:49
  now. So we know you didn't stay.
• 1:28:52
  Doesn't sound like there. It definitely was not a fit for
• 1:28:56
  you, right? So you had to.
• 1:29:00
  So, So what do you do about it? I don't want to put word to your
• 1:29:02
  mouth. So what do you what do you do
• 1:29:03
  about it? So after that second year, it
• 1:29:06
  was. So I went there in 2016, fall
• 1:29:11
  2016 after that outdoor 2018 season and.
• 1:29:19
  You're coaching distance. I was coaching distance and
• 1:29:24
  helping out with jumps. Wow, there's a that's a
• 1:29:26
  continued thing. That's cool.
• 1:29:27
  OK, keep going. I just want to make sure where
• 1:29:29
  we're at there. But after that 2018 outdoor
• 1:29:32
  season, I was let go. Oh yeah.
• 1:29:37
  So at that point in time, I struggled so bad while at Morgan
• 1:29:41
  State in Baltimore that I was really thinking like, do I want
• 1:29:46
  to do this? Oh yeah, inflection time.
• 1:29:50
  And and it was a bit relieving and.
• 1:29:57
  Yeah. Yeah, at the time, because I was
• 1:30:01
  aware in early June with it started July being like my last
• 1:30:06
  little time there. So I I had a little time and
• 1:30:11
  like I was making plans to go ahead and move on back to
• 1:30:14
  Georgia and get things rolling. And then old colleague K Marie
• 1:30:20
  Jones, she gave me a call. I didn't know I was getting
• 1:30:26
  interviewed at time by her, but she was just asking me some
• 1:30:29
  insight and. That's funny.
• 1:30:34
  He was like, yeah, Wells, like don't take your stuff to
• 1:30:37
  Georgia. Let's get you a storage facility
• 1:30:41
  here, a storage locker here in Winston Salem, because I would
• 1:30:47
  like for you to be my assistant coach.
• 1:30:51
  Yeah. So that that journey to move my
• 1:30:56
  stuff from Baltimore, MD, drive it down to North Carolina.
• 1:31:02
  Mind you, I'm borrowing my cousin's truck and trailer so
• 1:31:08
  from Georgia so. That.
• 1:31:12
  Was a whole journey in itself. But yes, Kay Marie Jones called
• 1:31:17
  and gave me the opportunity to come to Winston Salem as her
• 1:31:21
  assistant coach. Antonio, the best guest we have
• 1:31:25
  on this show, and I could say it's been 99% of them, they show
• 1:31:31
  up as their true authentic self, meaning when good things happen,
• 1:31:35
  they talk about that and when bad things happen.
• 1:31:38
  And you're reminding me of one of my favorite and greatest
• 1:31:42
  moments on the show. We had Karen Dennis, now
• 1:31:44
  retired. She was the head coach of The
• 1:31:46
  Ohio State University. Now, I told the story many
• 1:31:48
  times, but it's super important because now you're you're part
• 1:31:50
  of the story here. She was the head coach at UNLV
• 1:31:54
  and she goes to Ohio State. And I asked what I think is a
• 1:31:56
  very softball question. You know, it's like, so why did
• 1:31:59
  you go from UNLV to Ohio State? It's like, duh, Mike, you know,
• 1:32:02
  one of the, you know, biggest budget schools there is.
• 1:32:05
  She was from the Midwest, so it's closer to home, blah, blah,
• 1:32:07
  blah, blah. So I was, you know, it was a
• 1:32:09
  real softball question. I, of course she went to Ohio
• 1:32:11
  State and she goes, well, Mike, I was fired and you know it.
• 1:32:14
  You know, you're, you're, you're getting the experience of being
• 1:32:17
  on the show. You know, there's no pre
• 1:32:19
  recorded questions. There's no prompts from me.
• 1:32:23
  Like you get to share your journey, how you want to share
• 1:32:26
  your journey. You did not have to say, right.
• 1:32:27
  You could have said, I went from Oregon State and then, you know,
• 1:32:30
  my friend called me up and went to say them.
• 1:32:31
  So I went there. I wouldn't have known the
• 1:32:33
  difference. You know, I think I've said to
• 1:32:35
  you guys and guys that listened before, I don't do pre research.
• 1:32:39
  I don't even read his bio page because it just allows me to
• 1:32:41
  stay curious. I don't know when, why, how you
• 1:32:43
  know, I didn't call up any friends, common friends.
• 1:32:46
  But hey, so tell me about Antonio.
• 1:32:47
  So why do you leave that? You know, I don't know any of
• 1:32:48
  this, so you get to tell it. I would never know.
• 1:32:51
  And I asked Karen why, like why did you say that?
• 1:32:56
  Like why? You know, you could have just
• 1:32:58
  not mentioned that at all and no one would know, you know.
• 1:33:00
  And she goes Mike, and she goes, it's important.
• 1:33:02
  She goes, I believe it's important for young people so
• 1:33:05
  like yourself, Antonio, that for them to know that, you know, bad
• 1:33:08
  things can happen in this profession, some that you have
• 1:33:13
  no say so over, right? That's not your fault at all.
• 1:33:18
  But good things can continue to still happen.
• 1:33:20
  And so when you mention that, because I'm like, OK, well,
• 1:33:24
  wait. So that he's about to tell me
• 1:33:25
  he's going to go to Winston Salem as an assistant, Well,
• 1:33:26
  he's the head coach now. So like I started like I started
• 1:33:29
  putting the pieces together, like, oh, if that didn't happen
• 1:33:32
  at Morgan State, you're not where you are today.
• 1:33:37
  So first of all, take a step back.
• 1:33:38
  Thank you. Thank you for being so
• 1:33:41
  authentic. I think the, you know, the
• 1:33:43
  majority of our audiences is coaches, high school, college
• 1:33:47
  and everything in between. And I think that is just so, you
• 1:33:50
  know, Karen really instilled listen to me.
• 1:33:53
  I think it is important for us to be vulnerable and say, hey,
• 1:33:56
  you know what? This I got fired, I got let go.
• 1:34:00
  You know, no one, no one wants that.
• 1:34:01
  It's not a brag, trust me, but good things can still happen.
• 1:34:07
  So I I appreciate that very much.
• 1:34:08
  You, you've helped a lot of people who heard you share that
• 1:34:11
  story with that. So thank you so much for for
• 1:34:14
  that. I appreciate that.
• 1:34:15
  Yeah, like in that moment, man, like when I say I was, I was
• 1:34:20
  struggling to, I guess they find the motivation to even apply for
• 1:34:26
  a job. Sure.
• 1:34:27
  And I mean, I'm going to credit it to the full environment
• 1:34:36
  Baltimore D1 like that, that that's a absolutely different
• 1:34:42
  beast. I, I tell anybody that's coming
• 1:34:46
  into coaching and if they competed at the division two,
• 1:34:51
  Division Three, NAIA junior college level and like it never
• 1:34:57
  competed in Division One as a coach, you'll, you'll see things
• 1:35:03
  a lot different as you go into it.
• 1:35:05
  I agree with that. Again, it was very business
• 1:35:11
  minded. Yeah, I think the biggest part
• 1:35:14
  of your story is about career development and career
• 1:35:18
  transitions that, you know, loosely I could say, you know,
• 1:35:23
  the grass is not green on the other side, Meaning not every
• 1:35:27
  place that you think is gold is gold for you.
• 1:35:30
  It's gold for someone, obviously, like a place at
• 1:35:32
  Morgan State. Man, Neville Hodge has thrived,
• 1:35:35
  right? He's been there for, I don't
• 1:35:36
  know, 100 years. You know, he's been there
• 1:35:39
  forever, continues to be doing a great job.
• 1:35:40
  So obviously Baltimore and Division One and HBCU and all
• 1:35:44
  that is that's gold for him, not for you and not for this person
• 1:35:49
  and this person, this, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:35:50
  And you know, you, you, maybe you look at a, a, an Oregon,
• 1:35:54
  USC, Florida, Georgia and you go, oh man, I would do so Well,
• 1:35:58
  that'd be so great. And you, you get to one of those
• 1:36:00
  places, you're like, oh, wait a minute.
• 1:36:01
  I don't like living in the Pacific Northwest or I don't
• 1:36:03
  like living in LA or man the SEC, by the way, my whole
• 1:36:08
  career, because I'm from the Southwest to get to the SEC and
• 1:36:10
  I got there Mississippi State and I love those guys and gals,
• 1:36:12
  you know, former athletes, the head coach there now, which is
• 1:36:14
  just makes me old. But I got to the SEC and I was
• 1:36:18
  like, Oh, wait a minute, there's more to just coaching and
• 1:36:23
  recruiting. Like it's political, it's
• 1:36:25
  political. There's some political and I was
• 1:36:26
  like, I don't I don't think I like this.
• 1:36:28
  And there's other strive. You know, there's plenty of
• 1:36:30
  coaches that strive in that. And I was like, maybe let me get
• 1:36:33
  away from coaching and see if this sport really brings me back
• 1:36:36
  and brought me back here to Gil. Thank God.
• 1:36:38
  So that I think is the real lesson there of like, you know,
• 1:36:41
  I'm sure some people look at every division once goes.
• 1:36:44
  Oh, I just want to get to you know it.
• 1:36:45
  It's you know what this is. Oh Antonio, we may have unlocked
• 1:36:48
  something here a little bit. We always talk about the D1 or
• 1:36:51
  bust mentality of athletes. I I think there might be AD one
• 1:36:56
  or bust mentality amongst well, just specifically or track
• 1:37:00
  coaches. Yeah, so I.
• 1:37:05
  Know it's quite a few coaches, not just track and field like
• 1:37:10
  any sport. Like if you're trying to coach
• 1:37:12
  at the collegiate level, like we naturally think of Division One
• 1:37:16
  being the highest level in which from a funding, from a resource
• 1:37:22
  standpoint it is. But the glory behind coaching is
• 1:37:29
  being able to coach athletes regardless of what level you are
• 1:37:34
  at. Like, I mean, of course we all
• 1:37:38
  want to be able to say we coach The Olympian national champion.
• 1:37:44
  But if we are in a place where we are completing the goals of
• 1:37:50
  the institution, completing our own personal goals of like just
• 1:37:54
  progress as a coach, that you're not going to be stuck on
• 1:37:59
  Division One, Division two, Division 3.
• 1:38:01
  Right. Like, I've, I see it a lot
• 1:38:07
  amongst peers and like even younger coaches like asking me
• 1:38:12
  like, hey man, So what I got to do to get to the Division One?
• 1:38:16
  Like just stay patient. It's going to, it's going to
• 1:38:18
  come open. It might, yeah.
• 1:38:20
  Well, it it will definitely come open.
• 1:38:23
  It might not be available to you.
• 1:38:25
  Right. All you have to do is really
• 1:38:28
  position yourself from a experience standpoint, from a
• 1:38:33
  just mindset standpoint. And like you'll be in position
• 1:38:39
  to apply or even be considered, but you need to know that's what
• 1:38:44
  you really want to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:47
  It's interesting. I'm like going through my head,
• 1:38:50
  all these tweets I see about, you know, the D1 or bus
• 1:38:52
  mentality on athletes and, you know, hey, there's a lot of
• 1:38:55
  great opportunities in D2D3 and AI JUCO and, you know, all
• 1:38:59
  those, you know, D1's opportunity, D2's opportunity,
• 1:39:01
  D3, you know, those kind of things.
• 1:39:02
  And now I'm thinking like, like I might I like to like quote,
• 1:39:06
  quote, quote, tweet some tweets. And when it's about athlete,
• 1:39:10
  I'll change the word athlete to coach, you know, like, hey, this
• 1:39:12
  all. I think I must start doing that
• 1:39:14
  more and more about like, you know, hey, the D1 Buster
• 1:39:17
  mentality for athletes will have killed a lot of careers.
• 1:39:20
  I may quote, see that and change athletes.
• 1:39:23
  That's so interesting. See, that's that that is a theme
• 1:39:26
  we will explore in future episodes.
• 1:39:28
  I love that. OK, Antonio, we're getting
• 1:39:30
  closer and closer on time. So we're at Winston Salem.
• 1:39:33
  You're an assistant. Spoiler alert, we know you're
• 1:39:35
  the head coach. What I'd like give me a quick
• 1:39:38
  sentence or two. How many years have you been at
• 1:39:40
  Winston Salem? How many years were you the
• 1:39:42
  assistant and how did you become the head coach?
• 1:39:45
  OK, so came to Winston Salem and fall of 2018 I was assistant to
• 1:39:53
  Kay Marie Jones through COVID. I want to say yeah, 2021, fall
• 1:39:59
  2021 is when I became head coach because Coach Jones actually
• 1:40:04
  took a position at Georgetown University.
• 1:40:07
  Wow, good for her. And with consideration, the
• 1:40:13
  athletic director interviewed and I was offered the position
• 1:40:20
  and I've been here as head coach since December of 2021.
• 1:40:25
  OK, so my favorite question to ask first time head coaches.
• 1:40:29
  So you've been there. You said December 2021.
• 1:40:31
  So I'm not that smart. So you're on your you finished
• 1:40:36
  your fourth year as a head coach.
• 1:40:37
  OK, when you became the head coach and you've had a lot of
• 1:40:40
  experience like now I've had guys and gals who in their
• 1:40:43
  second year of coaching were head coaches.
• 1:40:45
  And so I'm like, well, you knew nothing like what in the world
• 1:40:47
  what you do want to be a head coach.
• 1:40:48
  You've had some experience and, and seeing a lot of other head
• 1:40:51
  coaches and how they do things and don't do things and stuff
• 1:40:53
  like that. What I'm always curious about,
• 1:40:55
  because this is a like D1 or bust, this is a little bit like
• 1:40:58
  that head coach or bust. Like a lot of people think they
• 1:41:01
  want to be head coaches and it's like you don't necessarily
• 1:41:04
  always want to do that either. There's a lot of freedom in
• 1:41:08
  being an assistant, which what, when you got the job and I know
• 1:41:15
  you, you were as prepared as you were up to that point.
• 1:41:18
  That's the best way of saying it, but you were not prepared
• 1:41:21
  because no one knows. Hopefully you'd agree with this.
• 1:41:22
  No one knows what the actual job of the head coach until you sit
• 1:41:24
  in that chair. OK, what was something?
• 1:41:27
  So I got 2 questions. The first one is what was
• 1:41:29
  something that as you took the title of head coach, you thought
• 1:41:33
  was going to be hard and, and you know your whole purview of
• 1:41:36
  head coach, recruiting, fundraising.
• 1:41:39
  Maybe you're on committees to hire a basketball coach.
• 1:41:42
  You know, you do other you're more involved in the athletic
• 1:41:44
  department, not just your program.
• 1:41:46
  Obviously recruiting, coaching, hiring, firing staff.
• 1:41:48
  I mean, there's just budgeting, movement, purchasing schedule.
• 1:41:53
  I mean, there's a list of 1000 things you have to do as head
• 1:41:56
  coach. What was something that you
• 1:41:57
  thought like this? I might, I might have to, I'm
• 1:42:01
  about to call my mentor, so I'm going to have to work with AD on
• 1:42:04
  this. But it ended up being easier
• 1:42:06
  than you thought. You actually got into it.
• 1:42:08
  You're like, oh, wait a minute. I I've never done it, but this
• 1:42:10
  I'm kind of cool with this. I'm not going to say easier, but
• 1:42:15
  like in the seat, in the position, I already knew time
• 1:42:20
  management was going to be the toughest thing, but
• 1:42:26
  understanding that I have a lot more control over said time.
• 1:42:32
  Right, right. So it it became second nature,
• 1:42:36
  like I'm not worried about what somebody else has to do.
• 1:42:40
  This is what the program needs. This is where we have to move.
• 1:42:43
  This is the time frame that we have to do it.
• 1:42:45
  So like getting everybody on that same page is the hardest
• 1:42:51
  part about the time management, like just making sure you're
• 1:42:57
  hitting your deadlines and understanding what you have to
• 1:43:01
  accomplish and get done within a certain time frame.
• 1:43:05
  Like it's all easily attainable because like you really control
• 1:43:12
  the time, the energy spent here and there.
• 1:43:16
  That's probably the biggest thing that is not necessarily as
• 1:43:21
  hard as I thought it would be. You knew it would be a
• 1:43:24
  challenge. And then you're like, OK, but
• 1:43:26
  I'm, I understand this. And then you got some more
• 1:43:29
  freedoms of like, oh, OK, well, I own my time a little bit more.
• 1:43:31
  Not, not completely. You know, I don't know that
• 1:43:34
  anybody owns 100% of their time, you know?
• 1:43:36
  You right, right. Whether you're you're a spouse,
• 1:43:37
  you have a bot, we all have a boss, you've got a bot, there's
• 1:43:40
  other people that own your time so much.
• 1:43:42
  OK, so my second question is actually the inverse.
• 1:43:44
  And you have been, so you've exhibited humbleness so well.
• 1:43:48
  So I feel like you're going to have a good one here because
• 1:43:50
  this is this is a little bit of like ego bad ego ego's not bad,
• 1:43:53
  bad ego's bad. So this is a little bit of like
• 1:43:55
  you have to admit, like there's a little bit of bad ego there.
• 1:43:57
  What was something, it's the exact inverse of the question I
• 1:44:00
  just asked you. What was something that you
• 1:44:01
  thought, you know what? This is going to be easy
• 1:44:04
  scheduling. I know where I want to go to
• 1:44:07
  meats budgeting. I took a counting one O 1 class
• 1:44:11
  back in the day and it end up being like, oh snap, this is
• 1:44:14
  actually a little bit harder or not.
• 1:44:16
  That's a little bit more. I didn't understand that you had
• 1:44:17
  to do this part. What was something that you
• 1:44:19
  thought was going to be easy and it actually became a found out.
• 1:44:22
  It was a little challenging. You've had to work at it.
• 1:44:24
  Maybe it, maybe it's easy now, but you know.
• 1:44:26
  The actual coaching of it all. Interesting.
• 1:44:32
  Like so working as an assistant coach.
• 1:44:36
  I mean, I had a smaller group to oversee as head coach for a
• 1:44:43
  program that's constantly evident flowing, not necessarily
• 1:44:47
  having the most resources from a staff standpoint.
• 1:44:50
  Right, right. Right.
• 1:44:51
  I have to make sure I'm able to see and give attention across
• 1:44:55
  the board, and that was exhausting.
• 1:45:00
  All right And even further like this school year, my former
• 1:45:06
  assistant, she stepped down it wasn't anything bad like she
• 1:45:11
  stepped down to be a mother, be a wife at the late part of July,
• 1:45:19
  early August. So from August, September,
• 1:45:26
  October, December, January, February, next, we hire our full
• 1:45:35
  time assistant, Paula Salmon. And mind you, I do have a part
• 1:45:39
  time assistant coach, Shawna Cabalis.
• 1:45:42
  Like she's anesthesiologist here, so her time is not very
• 1:45:49
  free. Like the amount of attention
• 1:45:53
  that I had to be able to give from a coaching standpoint to
• 1:45:58
  all of these event areas really outside of throwing.
• 1:46:02
  And I still made sure I found time to make sure they know I
• 1:46:06
  care because that's something that I've seen destroy programs
• 1:46:11
  when student athletes don't feel motivated and and wanted by head
• 1:46:19
  coaches. Like regardless of assistant
• 1:46:21
  coaches, given all the attention to their event areas, they still
• 1:46:27
  want to have that relationship with their head coaches.
• 1:46:30
  So from cross country, middle distance hurdles, jumps, rents
• 1:46:39
  like that was everything that I had to step up.
• 1:46:43
  That's a that's a great point because we think of the
• 1:46:47
  coaching, I'm going to say as the easy part because, well,
• 1:46:50
  that's what we've done. We've been an assistant coach
• 1:46:51
  for X amount of years. Like, oh, I know how to cut, you
• 1:46:53
  know, I can organize coaching. But then we forget, like, OK,
• 1:46:56
  well, there are when I became head coach, there are a bunch of
• 1:46:58
  other responsibilities that now come on top of that.
• 1:47:01
  Oh, and you're right. If if a staff member leaves,
• 1:47:04
  well, you're the one who has to plug and play until you figure
• 1:47:08
  out the next staff. Yeah, that's a great, great
• 1:47:11
  point. We we talked and we talked about
• 1:47:15
  this. You know, it's quite common for
• 1:47:18
  us as coaches. I see it every minute of every
• 1:47:21
  hour at the convention. We'll, we'll phone a friend,
• 1:47:25
  we'll call a coach up a mentor peer.
• 1:47:27
  Hey, I'm having this problem with this high jumper.
• 1:47:30
  Hey, I'm, I'm struggling with this 5K kid.
• 1:47:33
  What's a, you know, a workout or, you know, it's quite common
• 1:47:37
  as a head coach, though, again, you have all these other hats.
• 1:47:41
  Can you give me an example of a time you called a mentor peer
• 1:47:46
  for something that wasn't coaching?
• 1:47:47
  You know, you're, you're contemplating fly into this meet
• 1:47:50
  instead of driving and you're like, you know, boy, is it worth
• 1:47:52
  to spend that much money? Let me call Susie or Joe and,
• 1:47:56
  you know, see how they've cracked it or how did they, how
• 1:47:58
  did they, how did they travel to the conference meet in, I don't
• 1:48:02
  know if you guys are in Birmingham or not, but where did
• 1:48:04
  they stay? Is there a time where you had to
• 1:48:06
  like phone a friend for not not on the on the track stuff or the
• 1:48:11
  all the millions of other things you've got to concern yourself
• 1:48:13
  with? Like Coach Price, Tyree Price is
• 1:48:17
  probably the number one person I talked to as far as life as a
• 1:48:23
  track coach. Not necessarily just the
• 1:48:26
  coaching aspect of it, because I know how impactful my freshman
• 1:48:32
  year of college was and he was the one that really set the tone
• 1:48:36
  as the head coach of the team. Him and Coach Cool like talking
• 1:48:42
  with them, they they give me insight as to how they handle a
• 1:48:48
  lot of these things in this same seat because I know coach Price
• 1:48:54
  had to do it by yourself, Coach Coop had to do it by yourself.
• 1:48:58
  Coach L or Kelly had to do it by herself.
• 1:49:01
  Like, these are the people that I really look to, especially in
• 1:49:06
  this seat. Yeah, so I love.
• 1:49:09
  That when it came to anything outside of coaching, like they,
• 1:49:13
  they still had that answer. Yeah, it's great because they
• 1:49:17
  continue to evolve, right? So like a Tyreek personally,
• 1:49:19
  like he's seen how people at USC have done things coaching wise
• 1:49:22
  and now at TCU. And so he's like, you know, I
• 1:49:25
  used to do it this way, but you know what?
• 1:49:26
  I saw coach so and so at this school, and I really started
• 1:49:29
  moving towards that. Yeah, that's that that is the
• 1:49:32
  interwoven web of coaching that we need to continue doing.
• 1:49:36
  We can't have you in isolation over here and these guys in
• 1:49:39
  isolation over the year and D1 isolation over here and the
• 1:49:42
  Texas folks isolated high school over here.
• 1:49:44
  We've got to there's so many. It's much like coaching you
• 1:49:47
  mentioned about or coaching movement that there are a lot of
• 1:49:50
  similarities in every event from shop put to 10K.
• 1:49:53
  There are a lot of similarities. So if you know those basics,
• 1:49:56
  you're better off coaching any event.
• 1:49:58
  It's the same in coaching the profession.
• 1:50:00
  There are a lot of similarities in scheduling, budgeting,
• 1:50:02
  travel, recruiting, hiring, fire evaluating staff, things like
• 1:50:07
  that. So we, we got to continue that
• 1:50:09
  communication. I, I love that.
• 1:50:10
  I love that. OK, Antonio, so you're the head
• 1:50:13
  coach of Winston Salem State. It's the end of the 252025
• 1:50:17
  season. You get a great year.
• 1:50:18
  I saw you at nationals. It's always a good year.
• 1:50:19
  When the last time I see you is at nationals, that's always a
• 1:50:22
  good, that's a good, that's a good goal.
• 1:50:24
  Make sure you see Mike at nationals and you know you've
• 1:50:26
  it's been a pretty good year. You strike me for sure is the
• 1:50:30
  kind of guy who's always got their eye towards the future.
• 1:50:34
  What's got you excited and you get to define the future Could
• 1:50:37
  be next year, could be 5 years from now.
• 1:50:39
  What's got you excited? Sitting at the helm of the
• 1:50:41
  Winston Winston Salem State University.
• 1:50:44
  What are you guys, the Rams? We're the Rams, Yeah.
• 1:50:49
  What I'm excited for is just the next season.
• 1:50:54
  We had a very strong sophomore class this year.
• 1:50:59
  So that's everybody coming back. We had 7 leave between
• 1:51:06
  graduation and just exhausted eligibility and we are bringing
• 1:51:12
  10 in, including an All American from West Virginia State.
• 1:51:17
  So everything that we accomplished this year,
• 1:51:21
  including those two young ladies that made it to the nationals,
• 1:51:25
  outdoor and indoor and bringing somebody else in that was at
• 1:51:28
  that level and knowing that we have girls that are at that
• 1:51:33
  level, they just have to get a little bit faster, a little bit
• 1:51:36
  stronger. Like we have a strong team going
• 1:51:40
  into next year. I'm more excited about the team
• 1:51:45
  environment, right? That's something that I truly
• 1:51:50
  love and deceit. That's that's something that I
• 1:51:54
  really tried to be intentional with when it came to stability
• 1:51:59
  routine because I know how instability can kind of destroy
• 1:52:05
  student athlete experience. And like, I want these student
• 1:52:11
  athletes to come in and enjoy their student athlete
• 1:52:15
  experience. And I always say there's no,
• 1:52:19
  there's no fun like winning. So if you are enjoying your time
• 1:52:26
  at Winston Salem State as a student, I want you to enjoy it
• 1:52:29
  as an athlete and get everything, be the whole
• 1:52:33
  student. So I'm I'm excited for the team
• 1:52:37
  as a whole next year, cross country, indoor and outdoor.
• 1:52:43
  I'm getting the feeling that the future is bright for the Rams.
• 1:52:46
  Yeah, yeah. We, we, we've been working.
• 1:52:51
  That's good. This next year will probably be
• 1:52:55
  the best that we've done in quite a quite some time since
• 1:52:59
  coach Inez Turner was here. Oh my, is that right?
• 1:53:03
  She was the Oh man, love her. God, Lee.
• 1:53:06
  That's amazing. That's that's great history,
• 1:53:09
  Antonio, Thank you so much. You know, the most valuable
• 1:53:12
  thing that you can give me is your time.
• 1:53:13
  And you know, a little easier for you because season is over,
• 1:53:15
  Division 2 ends a couple weeks earlier, which is also helpful
• 1:53:19
  for me who goes to all these meets.
• 1:53:21
  But I'm so grateful for your time.
• 1:53:23
  And really, you know, I just want to stress to you and to you
• 1:53:26
  guys and gals that are listening, I got to say thank
• 1:53:31
  you. Thank you for your trust because
• 1:53:33
  again, you did not have to. You could have transitioned that
• 1:53:37
  differently and you chose to go with the truth.
• 1:53:40
  And I think that that story will bear out as important for the
• 1:53:45
  coaching profession. I I'm willing to predict in the
• 1:53:47
  next year to five years, multiple people are going to
• 1:53:50
  come up to you and say, hey, man, I heard your story.
• 1:53:53
  I heard about that. That helped me when I when it
• 1:53:56
  happened to me, like when it happened to me, I thought like,
• 1:53:58
  wait a minute, Antonio got through it.
• 1:54:00
  Hold on now. This ain't the end of the world
• 1:54:02
  here. And maybe they go back and
• 1:54:04
  listen to Karen Dennis's story. I think maybe I always want to
• 1:54:08
  say Karen Smith and it's Karen Dennis.
• 1:54:09
  So if I said Karen Smith earlier, I just thought about
• 1:54:11
  that. You said Dennis.
• 1:54:13
  OK, good, good, good. I always, I don't know why I
• 1:54:15
  always go Smith, Karen Dennis. Maybe they go back and listen to
• 1:54:18
  Miss Karen Dennis's story, but those are the kind of stories,
• 1:54:22
  real world experience. These are real world things.
• 1:54:24
  These are at the moment they happen.
• 1:54:26
  They are very devastating things that happen.
• 1:54:27
  No one wants to be fired. No one, no one, no one, no one.
• 1:54:31
  I'm working through with another friend right now that just got
• 1:54:33
  released. And we, we like certainty.
• 1:54:36
  We do not like uncertainty. And that's what not having the
• 1:54:39
  job is. It's uncertainty.
• 1:54:41
  So, so I'm just grateful for you for trusting me and trusting,
• 1:54:45
  you know, this process here to, to share that story the, the
• 1:54:47
  authentic way. And again, I think it's going to
• 1:54:49
  bear out. It's going to be very important
• 1:54:51
  for the coaching profession. So I'm just really grateful for
• 1:54:53
  your time and grateful for that trust and authenticity, my
• 1:54:56
  friend. Yes, Sir.
• 1:54:57
  Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for having me, man.
• 1:54:59
  I truly enjoyed these couple hours.
• 1:55:02
  And yeah, man, I look forward to seeing you in the near future.
• 1:55:06
  Absolutely, guys, thank you guys for being here.
• 1:55:08
  You know, as we are halfway through season 6 and no plan,
• 1:55:12
  I'll let you guys know if we have plans on ending this.
• 1:55:14
  And right now, in fact, we're we're growing it right.
• 1:55:16
  We're doing the Guild 1918 project, which, you know, we
• 1:55:19
  want to continue to to grow in the X's and O's and Ted talks of
• 1:55:22
  track and field podcast world side of there.
• 1:55:25
  Yeah, I don't know if again, you're listening to this
• 1:55:27
  probably in July. So I don't know if we've started
• 1:55:30
  the the new announcement. We have a Guild 1918 project,
• 1:55:32
  but you look out for something pretty cool coming along there
• 1:55:34
  with a another very positive coach, track coach, positive
• 1:55:39
  organization. I'm super excited about that.
• 1:55:41
  And just, you know, we're going to continue to bring these
• 1:55:43
  stories, you know, connections. That's the name of the podcast.
• 1:55:45
  We're going to continue bringing you these amazing men and women
• 1:55:48
  who choose to be track coaches and share their journeys because
• 1:55:51
  it's important. And that's how we're going to
• 1:55:53
  all move together and continue to move our sport up and
• 1:55:56
  continue to move the profession. That's that's the sport's great.
• 1:56:00
  And there's other people that are responsible for for growing
• 1:56:02
  that. I'm here, Gila Athletics is
• 1:56:04
  here. We're going to grow the
• 1:56:05
  profession of coaching track and field.
• 1:56:07
  We're going to continue to pour into that and uplift an honor
• 1:56:10
  your journeys there. So thanks again for being here
• 1:56:12
  and listening to my friend Antonio Wells and join us next
• 1:56:16
  week. We'll do it all over again.
• 1:56:17
  Thanks guys. The goals to appreciate the
• 1:56:22
  coach, the ones that point people most every season needs a
• 1:56:26
  voice of reason speaking the growth you got to prep before
• 1:56:28
  you carry the load ice coffee to the soul.
• 1:56:31
  For those of us who stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the
• 1:56:34
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 1:56:36
  There's more than one way to go. Taking dose S paying your toe.
• 1:56:39
  It ain't practice if your purpose ain't clear.
• 1:56:41
  It can't happen until you listen with both is you can't mentor
• 1:56:44
  without a mentor his of experience.
• 1:56:47
  You can reinvent those years. Every plan's got to stand and
• 1:56:50
  deliver to the price sacrifice. Can you give up you.
• 1:56:53
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 1:56:56
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 1:56:58
  It's not about how to, it's all about why you don't know till
• 1:57:01
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000.
• 1:57:04
  Waste of time, choose none so we all cross finish line.
• 1:57:07
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
• 1:57:10
  to put in the network. Your athletics is the network.
• 1:57:13
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 1:57:16
  where every track coach could be blessed.