#379: Jon Hill-Central Washington University | From Uncoachable Athlete to Division I Coach

0:00You're listening to the Gila FedEx connections podcast with host Mike Kennedy. Track and field world, you and L2N to a homo-serving Mike Cunningham. One of the extraordinary message on Gila FedEx connections. Alright, you're back here on the Gila FedEx connections podcast. So, I'm going to be with you join us in press play today. It just amazes me. You know, you guys keep coming back when our seventh year halfway more than halfway through our seventh season here and no stoppage insight. We've already got plans for season eight some fun things that we'll do there and just proud and humbled that you would join us and come along the journey for hearing these amazing men and women around the country and the positive impact that they make on young people. This is your first time here. My name is Mike Cunningham. I am proud to be your host here. I work for Gila FedEx obviously and every once in a while I try to sell stuff. So, you know, if you're anything, maybe call one of our team that be pretty good. Maybe that's how I fund this podcast. It's the only thing that works there if we do that for the podcast.

1:02But let's hop into it today. I'm super excited. I think this is always a little scary to kind of predict this because I don't know. I haven't done it yet. I'm thinking in the future. I think this is going to be an amazing story. You know, our number one goal of lifting honor. The coach's journey. We're going to do that with today's guest. But I think we're going to chop it up on some things that maybe you don't see coming. But maybe need to hear. So stay tuned. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. But let's get started. Help me welcome the head coach from Central Washington University. The wise, the wonderful Mr. John Hill. John, welcome to the show. My friend. Thanks Mike. Really appreciate you then. You only ran from me for weeks to finally get you nailed down on months actually. It goes a while ago actually. You were hard. You were slippery to get my friend. Yeah. What are we doing in May? Yeah. Are you busy in May at all Mike? Hey, dude. First of all. And I think when you told me like, hey, man, can we look in the summer? I am always amazed. First of all, whether it's August, February, it doesn't matter that anyone gives me two hours of there's time. It's just humbling. Honestly, you know, that's a lot of time.

2:03When someone says yes during the season, which we do thank God because we go every week here, I'm always like, dude, I know how busy. In fact, I don't know how busy you are. That's how busy I just know you are. So I'm always blessed. And when someone says, hey, man, can you reach out in a couple of months? All good. Since I'm doing it all year, it's like, well, I'm going to eat content when you're ready. So yeah, we'll do it. So I'm pumped, bro. It's all good. It's all good. This podcast for the culture. I mean, this is for this. It's been cool to see the advancement. I tell you what, I'm still so humbled. I go to track meets, conventions, clinics, and you know, through text and social media. When people reach out and just say, hey, the ones I like the best, you know, I love the general one. Hey, the podcast love it. You know, that's so her touching to me. When someone says, hey, I listen to so and so's episode. And you know, I got X out of that. That to me is like, okay, I'm adding value to the coaching profession. And that's my daily mission and passion. So those are the ones I get a little tickled about. That's the ones that kind of hit the old heartstrings there.

3:04So I appreciate that. Dude, what's life like in Central Washington? How's things going out there? It's beautiful. Yeah, it's great. I mean, you're three out here. We're in the middle of the state of Washington. So it's a whole different climate than like what people think over on the West side. But it's warm and sunny and beautiful. So I had to, you've been to the indoor facility over at Spokane. I'm assuming. Yeah. When I was working to earn that facility and thank God we did. There was, I had to get out there for a meeting and to fly into Spokane everywhere I looked, you know, Indie, Chicago, et cetera, it was all like 1500 to 2000. It was crazy. You know, I still don't understand how they price these things out. And so I was like, man, it's really hard to do a $2,000 plane ticket. And then I was like, well, how much is it into Seattle? So I look into Seattle and it's like 500. And I was like, well, that's much more doable. And, you know, I can package other things, go visit other schools or whatever. But that means I had to drive from Seattle to Spokane, dude.

4:07Beautiful. But oh my God, was that really far? Where were you that I passed you? Because I'm sure I was on one highway all the way through. Did I pass you or were you off the... Yeah, we're right on the highway. So a lot of people know of Ellen'sburg is just being kind of a gas stop on the way. And some people get lunch. But even fewer like bencher up into the campus and we've got this unbelievable campus. That's tucked away kind of just off the highway. But yeah, living in New York and Houston and then having a baby born, like I was ready for a little bit slower pace of life. And I was ready to see the stars again. And, you know what I mean? It's a small town. And when the students leave, it's even smaller. So... We're jumping a little bit ahead because we're talking about today instead of Washington. But how many students is Central Washington? It's about 10,000 all over the world. I went to Troy and I think when I was there, we were... I think we were six or seven and now maybe they're 12 or whatever. Yeah, that's a good size. Well, all right. Well, next time I have to drive from Seattle to Spokane, I promise. I'll grab lunch and let you know that I'm in town.

5:07Yes, please. Everybody's invited it. Come on, guys. Yeah, but please... I saw that. Please come on. Come on, mom. We'll go to visit us, I swear. It's beautiful. Well, John, let's jump into our way back machine here, my friend. And let's learn about your journey and how in the world did you become a coach? And how in the world did you get to Central Washington? Assuming you were an athlete and we certainly know what assuming does. We've got some amazing coaches who were not athletes at all. We're in the world. Does Trek and Field start for you, my friend? Yeah, I was introduced to the Sport and High School. I think like a lot of people... I was a three-sport athlete in high school. And my football coach was the Sprint Coach. So I went to Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon. And it's an unbelievable, like, athletic culture. A lot of people think that sports are required there. But it's such a... Not an expectation, but it's such a way of life there that everybody kind of just does sports year-round at that school. So like you were saying earlier on our pre-conversation, we had 330 kids on our track team and 1,000 kids in the school. And so...

6:08Yeah, 10 to 12 heats of the 100-meter dash. And we would bring our own officials because the meets... We couldn't... The meets we'd go to, they couldn't, you know, we'd be there until 10 at night. And so we just thought that was what track was, you know, growing up. And so my football coach, my coaches were... Coaches of men and women, right? They were coaches of athletes. Then they were sport coaches. And so coach Ken Potter just retired this year as the winning is high school football coach in the state of Oregon. So coach Jerry Hahn was another, like, incredible, like high school mentor. But those are guys that coached me in the fall and football. Coach me in the winter in basketball. And then we're my track coaches in the spring. And it was just... They were developing us as men, you know, as young men of character. So... Was all... And maybe in general or maybe these are exceptions. Was your football staff also all your other sports coaches? Or did you have specific track coaches, basketball coaches, tennis coaches, etc.? Uh, we had specialists across the board.

7:11Like our head track coach was the cross-country coach. Okay. But also these guys, they lived it, you know what I mean? And I remember, I remember it to this day, and Jerry, if you're watching, I might just send this to you. We would be at basketball and if we didn't run a drill, right? He would say, I've already fed Ripkin, it's his dog. I've already fed Ripkin, I can stay here all night. You know what I mean? Like it was like, oh boy, if he already fed his dog, then that means he's got that. You know? So, you know, we were just there and they lived it with us. And it was like when basketball is over, we all just rolled into track. And so... It was nice. What's interesting is that is a stereotypical, like small school attitude of like, hey, football is over, so we needed the basketball team, so we all did that. And then we were... But you're talking about that's a fairly large school. I mean, I think my school was maybe 500 kids, so we were half that. You had almost many people in the track team as we had my whole school, but there was a lot of multi-sport attitude there, it sounds like. Lots. Yeah. And then we were involved in lots of different things. We didn't call them extracurriculars, we called them co-curriculars.

8:11They were part of our educational experience. I like that. Yeah. And same thing with like a Christian ministry, like campus ministry and different things we did in those avenues, and then different academic stuff. Like, it was an all-antipity experience. And so I appreciated that. Yeah. My dad went to school there. He was a marathoner, but I was like a sprinter jumper, hurl-y. Yeah. Anyways, going back to high school, like, I was probably the fifth or sixth fastest sprinter, so I started in the hurdles. That's, you know what I mean? If you're not fast enough to be on the 4-by-1, then hurdles. And I wasn't like dynamic enough to long jump, so they tripled jump me. So that's kind of what I did for like three years. You know, it was just hurdles and triple jump. And there's some other events I was interested in sprinting and long jumping and stuff, but we already had guys that did that. So it kind of instilled this like we had, you know, positions to fill. And if you needed to play point guard this game, if somebody else, you know, we're going to run a different lineup, like that's what we did. So we had a really great, like, pre-meat meeting that I still take elements of this to this day, where our coach would get together and he'd score out the meet.

9:12And every meet we'd lose. We didn't lose very often, but every meet on paper we'd lose. And he said, all right, Johnny, I got you getting third in the hurdles. Now, if you can win, that'll play us up by four. You know what I mean? I was like, well, I got to win. Dude. You know, every guy, you know, so every game is like, okay, if we all do our job, we can win by 70. You know, but on paper, it's like, I got you losing, Johnny. That's a little evil genius and not so evil. That's genius of, you know, motivations a part of coaching. So the kids don't get a big head. Like, we always went like, hey, this might be the one. Look guys, I've got you third. They've got Tommy and Larry in there. And I'm not sure you got to show me, Johnny. Like, that's pretty cool. What would you have said, and maybe it changed through your stay in high school here with me? You know, when we're especially 15, 16, 17 year old kids, identity is a big thing, right? We're track athletes, we're football athletes, we're, you know, the different clicks, we're goth, we're jocks, whatever. Would you, you played three sports and probably played them pretty well?

10:15What would you have considered yourself? Were you a football player who did basketball on track? Were you a basketball guy who did those other two sports? What did you, at least at the initial, have identified as? I think he changed every year. Like initially I was a basketball player who also did, you know, football and I didn't even know what track was, but we were required to either do spring conditioning or track. And honestly, there was more girls in track than there was in spring football conditioning. So I would head over there and hang out with my little girlfriend and do stuff and, you know, it's funny. That is, that is a common theme of when I have our males on here. They'll say, you know, I went to track, he was, you know, Mike, there was the girls there. I don't think I've had a single woman coach on here that said, you know, I went to track. That's what the, they were, they were there to get better at track. The dudes were being dudes. Yeah. Yeah. Love that. No, a lot of women, but, you know, young girls in this big, like, no, that's also where the girls were at. You're right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's a good thing. We all just wanted to hang around with other girls. So let's dive into John as a 16, 17, 18 year old kid because, you know, spoiler alert,

11:19we know you become a track coach. What kind of athlete were you? And what I mean by that, I don't care. I don't think I've ever asked anybody what their PR was. That means nothing to me in regards to who you become as a coach. I'm more thinking like, were you the guy like on Wednesday, you're asking coach, hey, so why are we doing this workout? Because we, and why did we do yesterday's workout there? But, and not because you're like, you know, why in the world are we doing this? Is more like, I'm trying to figure it like this out, were you that kind of kid? Or, because I have a lot of grace for 16, 17 year old kids, were you like, man, Mike, I was 16 years old, coach said run, I ran, coach said jump, I jumped out of, I was trying to figure things out. I was trying to do what coach told me to do. What kind of athlete were you that, is that age? I was all of it. That's so funny. You said that I was all of it. And I, my first year, I wanted to go do multiple sports. I wanted to be a three sport athlete in college. And so I went down to do NAA and I was thinking about playing football and trying to walk onto the basketball team, but ended up just doing track at the NAA level. And then, stay in high school, like a good coach, you're already a step ahead of me. Oh, gosh, stay in high school with me.

12:20No, in high school, I think I was probably more talented than I was coachable. And I didn't take track seriously at all. Interesting. It was, it was very much a recreational thing that, you know, not many people around me on the sprints hurdle side were a holistic track and field athlete. So there was a lot of cross country guys who were. They did it all fall, winter, spring, but the guys who were also good at track were probably good at those other things too. And so no, it wasn't like, it wasn't a big status elevator to be good at track, you know, to mean even even at a good track school, but I think cross country basketball, volleyball, football, obviously. Yeah, just on that level. But no, I was not coachable at all. When you say not coachable, was that, did that manifest like, because I imagine on a team of 300, I mean, we had maybe five. 30 kids on our track team and it was kind of hard to hide, I guess, but it wasn't impossible. And we only had 30. It'd be easier to hide. And you know what I mean by hiding like, you know, I just look over here and I wanted to do that rep where you that kind of uncouchable or uncouchable in the sense of like, I ain't

13:25gonna do the extras coach. I'm gonna do what you tell me, but I ain't doing the extras here. What do you mean by uncouchable? Yeah, pretty much that. I think it was my third season of the year. You know, we were beating people pretty handily. I thought I was pretty good. And I am going to jump ahead, Mike. I'm not going to let you stop me. This is why I'm so appreciative of my college coach because he goes, no, talent isn't enough. You know what I mean? Your talent isn't going to get you there. And being good in Portland, Oregon is different than being good in Houston, Texas or being good in Florida or being good in California. Like I had different, I had to be taught what good looked like because winning districts and breaking, you know, breaking a school record or, you know, I was pretty good. And so I had to learn that like, instead of, this is a thing that like, I was coached by K. Batolbert. And so he taught me like, you know, good is not good enough, you know what I mean? And once you think you're good, you've got to keep pushing. And then when you're all done, then you can finally look back and like, you know, enjoy what you did. But yeah, if I faced, if I faced the setback oftentimes, I say, well, it wasn't meant to be, you know, I just back off the challenge.

14:25Interesting. That's a coping mechanism. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Well, you mentioned a dear friend of mine who has been on the podcast, K. Batolbert. So I can't wait to get to that. I'm not there yet, John. Yes. Stay with me here. Okay. So as a 17, 18 year old John, you know, senior year, you're doing all these different sports, take us through what were you thinking about college in regards to going and what sport and what I always love to know is what was 17, 18 year old John thinking they were going to become? I'm going to go major in chemistry because I'm going to become a doctor. I'm going to go major in business because I'm going to be a business owner. Take us through that senior year going towards college. I was just trying to get in somewhere. I did not have a whole lot of choices. Is that right? Yeah, I was not a great high school student, you know, a good SAT school, but this goes along with the, it's good enough, you know what I mean? I had to learn that. I had to learn that like the pursuit of excellence, not the pursuit of passing, you know, being

15:29on the basketball court, if you have it, if the shot goes in, it's good enough. And I'm not not in basketball coaches, but you learn this like, well, if it goes in, if it banks in, it's still worth the same amount of points as if it's a, you know, a swish or whatever. Right. I track and feel it's not like that. It's not like if you mark a long jump, it's a good jump. Like no, you might mark it. And then there's a million different things that you have to do well. And so it kind of taught this, this pursuit of perfection, like this pursuit of an unattainable perfection. Like there's no such thing as being good enough, you know? And there was a lot of like that in high school, where it's like, well, I'm good enough. And if I'm not good enough, I'll quit, you know, I'll walk away from it. I'm always surprised, you know, because I just, you know, I put every track and field coach on a pedestal. I mean, that's just, that's just who I am. That's who Alan built. And so when a coach tells me, yeah, I struggled in, because I'm always like, oh, you, I don't think every track and field coach was 4.0 and 30 something ACT, but, you know, I'm like, oh, you had, you know, you can go anywhere you wanted. Maybe you couldn't go to Ivy League, but, you know, whatever.

16:30It always surprised me, but it makes me remember, oh, wait a minute. We're humans first. Oh, and coaches are, because we're always doing this for athletes. How do we make a steady path forward of improvement? Well, okay, if, if John Hill had to improve, well, that means you had to start somewhere and that might be down here. And then we continue to improve. That always made, like when you said that, I was like, really, that's just crazy to me, man. So what were, yeah, so what options were available to you? And again, what were you thinking about major and career wise at that point? It was the last thing that was on my mind. I was just trying to get through the next season. You know, I was just trying to get through, you know, make a little money in the summertime, but it was not, college was not on the forefront of my mind. The, the, the colleges I wanted to go to, I just assumed my dad went to Gonzaga. And it was, I was like, oh, I couldn't go to a Jesuit school and see, in Spokane, where my dad went. And then senior year, I look and is like, oh, they don't do men's sprints, you know, I look it up. Santa Clara, bunch of my friends are going to Santa Clara, and I don't know if I could have gotten to Santa Clara. Look it up and they don't do men's sprints.

17:31And I was like, oh, man, Oregon State wouldn't that be cool? And at the time, they didn't do men's sprints. And so at the time, I was like, what am I going to do? You know, so I committed to Linfield out of high school. And this is just, my parents left it all up to me. And it was such a fumble on my part, you know, but it was huge in my learning process. But I was like, I'm going to Linfield. A couple of my friends are going to Linfield. Their coach Gary Kilber was so kind to me through the recruiting process, so kind. It just felt such a connection. How far is that from Portland? I know it. Yeah, maybe an hour and a half. Yeah, okay. That's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I applied, got accepted, got, you know, got into the communication school. I wanted to be in, you know, physical therapy or whatever, got into communications. And I saw how much the school was going to cost. And it was a D3 private school. It cost me like 40 grand a year. And I was just like, oh, my God. I can't, I can't do that. So I went to Southern Oregon. I took a day trip down to Southern Oregon. The guy offered me 1500 bucks. Mike Jones offered me 1500 bucks and I was like, done.

18:33We'll do it. A bunch of other guys from the state of Oregon, like we're going down there. It's like two other finalists from the hurdle final at the state meet. We're going down there. Oh, cool. Yes. Yeah. So I go to Southern Oregon, a couple of my friends are playing football, a couple of my friends are playing basketball. Hold on there. First of all, what year do you graduate high school? That helps you. Okay. So you have two. Okay. So that's so interesting that a couple of the guy, like other herdlers that you had raised again, said, you know, gone down there. Did you like, did you, how did you, did you know before you went to Southern Oregon that they were going to be there or they coached it? Like, or did you guys, there's no chat to, you know, texting to be do. You know, we're talking, we're talking August 15th. I'm down there. So you know what I mean? Like the whole school starts tomorrow. Mike, when I moved into Southern Oregon, it's, it's not a great. It, it, it, it, the acceptance rate is very friendly. It's, it's a, it's an accessible education. Bro, I went to Troy University. Let's go. There's no shade to be thrown here by me. Trust me. We good. I did into the dorm that was all the guys who applied late to a school that's not that competitive.

19:38And it's an all men's dorm that they, that they opened up like an overflow. So you can imagine the characters that were in this place. So it was fun. I stay in touch. I saw one of my old roommates in the airport just traveling like back from Nashville. I mean, yeah. So it, it was a great experience. So what, what did you start out? Because you talk about Linfield communications you got into that, that's cool. What did you start out at Southern Oregon? I started out doing like health science type of thing, but pretty quickly, uh, I went there and I went to Jesuit high school and then I went to Southern Oregon. Immediately in my first English class, they moved me to the honors college. And so I bump up to honors college. I decided like I wanted to be a pediatrician at the time. I was getting 3.8, 3.9, take biology and anatomy. I interned over the summer. I stayed there over the summer and did that. Okay. So hold on. That seems like fairly 180ish to what you described in high school. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, getting good grades in biologians, what changed? I mean, you start fresh.

20:38When you start in the college, I really tell kids that you can be whoever you want to be. And when you're in high school and I kind of fell into this, I don't like the term dumb jock, but I was okay with that. You know what I mean? I was good at sports and I was good at other things and I was social. So it was okay with me not to be good at school. And once your GPA is bad because you're, you know what I mean? You start young. It looks like, and it is a really steep climb. And so that was another thing that like I had to overcome and like my adult life is, if things start out poorly, how do you respond? You know what I mean? And in my youthful days, it was like, well, epic. You know what I mean? I'll just get seas and that's who I'll be. But I had a chance to start fresh. And I got, you know, 1400 on DSA T. So it wasn't an aptitude thing. So it was like, let me just, I've always been told I was smart. Let me just be smart. Let me, you know, let me start fresh. I know I'm smarter than these guys. These guys all cried late. Don't know what they're for all this. Yeah, let me just get some good grades here real quick.

21:39No, you know, it was just like, why don't we just do this? You know what I mean? Like, this is who I am. That's not who I am. This is who I am. And how did track go during this time? You got grades kind of on the right track, no pun intended. How was the athletic side of it? It was great. I mean, it was, it was fine. It was, it was an NEI experience that we had one coach for everything in speed power. We didn't do indoors. And so we started a little later. And I ended up, I think I was, I want a couple conference titles. I was the freshman athlete of the year. You know, I mean, Winston Nationals. I was all American in the long jump. But you didn't have to jump that far. Oh, they got me long jump. I got to start long jumping. So that was cool. I was, say, wait a minute. I was first to have heard a long jump. Yeah. Yeah, long jumping. That was cool. Yeah, did some things. But it was a one day championship. But they needed bodies. And I was ready to go and do a bunch of stuff. So. Yeah. Well, now I know Southern Oregon has basketball. I think they have football. I mean, I went and visited that school. It was very cool school, actually.

22:41That's where the coach, I can't remember his name, but he was telling me about how the mountain lions. He was like, yeah, he goes, you know, sometimes you leave late. You got to look out and see and even, he told me some experience. And I was like, bro, not me. I ain't going to school there. You cannot tell me there's mountain lions just hanging out. And you got to be worried about that. I can't, I can't worry about that. That's not good, man. That was not a recruiting spill for me. That's for sure. What did you miss football in basketball at all early? I don't know if I missed it. Yeah. I was, you know, I was ready to be done, ready to move on. And yeah, no, track started to look cooler and cooler in my eyes. You know what I mean? Track really seemed like something that I think, I went to the Oregon Track Camp and I met with these guys and like, met some coaches down there and I was like, oh, there's levels to this, you know? And I saw just like, you know, when you go to state and you go to Hayward and it's like, man, this is really cool. You know, so comparing a state championship at the high school level to NAI Football, I

23:41put the state championship in. You know what I mean? It's a, it's a, it's a show. You know, you know, and so it was like, no, this is objectively cooler, you know? And so I was like, let me just see how far I can take this thing. I was wonder about all of our other states. I'm like, man, you guys have state meets and there's some great facilities. I wonder if those Oregon kids know how lucky they are. All their state meets are at friggin' Hayward Field. That's crazy, man. That's just nuts. How did the career path so you're going through school, you're getting some good grades? I'm still not necessarily hearing and I wanted to become a coach at this point. I'm not hearing that yet. No, I got into the sports side of things, but then I started taking some little bit of business classes. And the labs were just killing me. I was so tired of sitting in the labs in those little desks and those little stools and those little black books, you know, just like, man, it, it, it, part of me was like, I could be outside right now, you know? So there was a business class and I was like, man, maybe being an AD, maybe the sports

24:43administration side is where I'd like to be because I've done some sales things. I've worked in like food service and that's like an awesome, like, you know, you're working with people and not black books and labs and, you know, eaters and stuff. So it took some business classes and I was thinking, man, I really want to be an AD. I like the sport administration side. So that was my second year at Southern Oregon. I ended up walking away from the track team my second year. So I didn't do any sports bear. I was a little practice player, a little, you know, try to keep you safe. Well, hold on, hold on. You go freshman year, you get academics on track like, like things looked like they're going really well for John Hill here. You make it to nationals. You score points at nationals and then you just stop doing it or sophomore year. Yeah, that's right. There's either something you don't want to talk about it and that's always fair or something that happened. What in the world? This makes no sense. Well, I mean, I just wanted to kind of get my lifestyle back on track and it wasn't like

25:46track and feel that the NA IA level wasn't as serious as I felt like it could have been for me, you know, and it wasn't a deliberate red shirt. But back and back, we've been the pre portal days. It took a long time to like to communicate with coaches. You had to get your release, you had to get that signed, it's kind of a few way thing. And then you could start having conversations. And so I had actually seen Portland State at a meet. Tony Bini was their coach. Tony Bini was the camp counselor at the Oregon meet too. I saw him at a meet and I was like, man, like what are you guys doing? He's like, you know, you know, he's like, we're trying to build something special at Portland State, you know, it's like, that's great. It's great to see that Soko had an even no Portland State had a track team. So I'm just down there. I don't know. I was just trying to get my life figured out. I've changed the majors and, you know, track just, there was a lot of points. And even at Portland State, where it's just like, man, is this worth 1500 bucks? Is this what I want to do with my time? And so now as a coach, I want you to want to do this.

26:49You know what I mean? I want you to think long jump and it's the coolest thing in the world. Like you don't, don't do it. Go do something else. I have a lot of respect for this because, again, we're talking about, you know, 19, 20-year-old John here. You're certainly more put together today than you were at 20 years old. And you know, there's, especially now because of the transfer portal and social media, it's real easy and quick and convenient for us to hop on the kids that transfer and things like that. And I'm always like, you know, certainly, you know, a lot of people say, you know, these kids transfer as soon as John yells at them, they're just going to transfer. And that's why, you know, they can't handle tough conversations. I'm like, in my head, I'm like, oh, certainly, there's some athlete that got upset that they're coach yelled at them. And that's the reason they're transferring. Sure, that happens. I don't doubt that. But I just feel like, you know, I know I've met enough 17, 18, 18, 20, 20-year-old kids that I'm like, you know, they have some reason. They're trying to find themselves. They want to get closer back to family. A parent is sick. I just don't, I don't like this vilifying of everybody that transfers now.

27:51And it's like, you know, by the way, you know, we had transfers before the transfer portal, right? Like, I mean, I know it's a little easier now, but you know, people did it before that too, right? Yeah, it's probably transfer. And that's what I like is here in stores like this. Like, hey, man, here's a reason very valid reason. Like, who would look at you and go, why did you transfer? Why didn't you stick it out? Mar-Wah, you know, like, no, he needed to transfer. This was in his cards. God bless him and hope it was successful. You know, so, yeah, I just, I love that. So you transferred to Portland State? Yes. Yeah. I moved back home. Yeah. I had the opportunity to run D1. Nice. When I'm searching out like colleges, I had seen that there was a head coach at Portland State who was a jumps coach, right? And I'm just starting to tailor in the long jump and I'm like, man, I think I can be good at this. I think I can be good. I think I could be good. You know, this makes sense to me, you know, and so I found Cable and I'm not, it was not a match made in heaven, like, at all because they're not here. And Cable pushed me. And I mean, I got to work with a guy Chad Perry and Chad was next to me.

28:51You know, Chad, yeah, yeah, my coaching tree is one. Yeah, that's what I'm like. Yeah, holy crap. Yeah. Yeah, it was my event coach and he was 28 years old, something like that. He used to be the shit out of us. So it was me and Seth Henson. Do you know Seth Henson? Yes. Yes, of course. Holy crap, dude. This is why you were supposed to transfer right here. That's a loan, man. Yeah. So I'm training partners with Seth. I'm working with Chad. Cable is the head coach and he's beating the shit out of us. And we're, you know what I mean? We didn't know that there was an eight-hour period. Nobody told us there was an eight-hour period. But he's like, this is what it takes to be good. It's anyway. It's like we went there and I, I mean, I got there during the summertime and I did five minutes of a warm-up and I was like, this is the best training I've ever had. So, you know, in high school, I was working with different like, I go out to, you know, Spark training. It used to be. It started. The Nike thing? Yeah, Matt James started that and like Beaverton. And I remember watching that at this place called the hoop. We used to go out and hoop at the hoop.

29:51It was a big warehouse at basketball courts and a little gym. But I saw like sports training evolve and like Nike was getting into high performance training. And I, you know, Nike's right down the road and I see they're doing Spark testing and data analysis. And I got linked up one of my little summer jobs was with Spark testing. So I travel around to softball tournaments and we've measured rotational strength and, you know, softball throws and you come up with your little Spark rating, you remember that? Yeah. And, no, and I got into Cable's like five minutes. I was like, this is this is high level track and field, you know what I mean? And I was sore as hell, but like it didn't take me, but five minutes to realize this is, this is serious. This is interesting because you, if you to told me the other side of the opposite of that is like, no, I got there, Mike and do we were doing things and it was hard. I was so I was like, I thought I wanted to get in track. This actually, maybe I had it better down in Southern Oregon. So you have forks in the road yet to make these decisions. I love that it was the, you know, the like, oh, okay, this is cool.

30:51Like I can automatically tell this is different and I like this. I can see now, John, like you, you start ratching up a little bit of track and track knowledge at this point. Yeah. Oh, having to, well, I'm with Chad, right? And I'm watching Cable and I knew this stuff was good, but Chad and I, we were both immature and we would both say that we were both young. And I mean, I would come to the track and he'd be like, hey, I need more. I need more. I'd MF him at the track and I'd walk off the track and I'd quit and I'd quit on the track. Several, several times a year. I'm out of here. I'm done. I don't need this because I'm still on 1500 bucks. Right. Yeah, right. And Chad would be like, hey, enough for this. Yeah, Chad would be like, see, you weren't built for this anyways. You know what I mean? I come back the next day. You know what I mean? And Chad would be like, are we good? Back we're good. I'm back. You know, like, please, please take me back. And he would. I mean, any back. All right. This is what it takes. Do you want to be good? And it took me like three or four of those. And that's why I'm getting goosebumps thinking about these guys.

31:52But like, if we're not patient with young people and helping young people learn their mistakes, then what do we do? You know what I mean? Like, if it wasn't for those guys, you know, the things we said, like, you know, I mean, they said we're, you know, not easy to come back from. But every time they were like, yeah, John, we got you. That's exactly when you were telling that story. I was like, oh, man, thank God he wasn't one of these, you know, we've got a few of these one in guns. And you walk off. It's, you know, you're dead to me and all that kind of stuff. Like he had patience to be like, oh, man, this kid, he's got to learn. And maybe he will. But I won't know if I don't let him back on the team the next day. He comes back, you know what I'm saying? Like, oh, like the grace and patience, even in a self-admitted immature time period for him. That's amazing, man. I love that. If you're in it for the kids, then don't give up on the kids. And thank God people give second, third, fourth, you know, I need a fifth, sixth, seventh chances. Thank God the more people are like that, then not. And that allows us to grow up at our own speed.

32:55Oh, man. And it helped me recognize boundaries too. You know what I mean? Here's where you really went wrong, you know, I'm going to let you back under these conditions. And there was always punishments associated with it. I think for maybe a third of my career, I was without a scholarship. You know, like it was it was it was fair and it was honest and it was what I needed in that time. But it was also like, hey, I think you could be good and not just 22 feet good, but we think you could be good, good, you know. And so and they knew what good looked like, you know, they'd been there. They weren't talking, you know, like, you know, like not some local coach, but they weren't talking out their ass like they knew what to do. And so it meant a lot. And then how and maybe did it change for you? When did it was like, you know what, I need to take some self-responsibility. I need to grow up. If I'm really I'm supposed to be better than 22. If I really am supposed to not get kicked off or quit every friggin day, when and how did that change if at all? Yeah. So I'm going into my fourth year, which is my junior year. And I'm still just like on the fence, like in my whole, you know, lifestyle.

33:59But no, and this is what I tell my kids too. I did my first offseason training in its entirety. I was all it took and that flipped the switch for the first time in my life. Maybe I was ahead of the work. I wasn't behind the work. You know what I mean? I wasn't playing catch up. It brought me out of the third grade, fifth grade. Oh, you didn't get that first signature signed over five. You know what I mean? That first sheet of paper, I never got that sheet signed. So I always started over five in the points. You know what I mean? I did the summer training and I came in ahead. And that gave me the confidence to stay ahead. And that's all it took. And I only had, you know, 18 months, like a year and a half with these guys where I was really bought in, you know, and that's all that's what sunk the hook for me. Like if I could change some lives here, like this is what it's about. It's about the journey. You mentioned academically when you got to college, it was like, you know, let me see. If I study, buckle down, can I be good? And you did. Is that what it was for the summer thing? Because like I'm trying to think, well, why did you do that summer thing?

35:00Was it like, you know what? Let me just try. I'll show them it doesn't work. Who would, it'll be the same. And it ended up working. Is that like what flip to switch to actually do that offseason training? It was kind of just starting fresh. You know what I mean? I set a schedule for myself. I saw the light at the end of the NCAA tunnel approaching. As we'll see your little older. Yeah, yeah, right. Mm hmm. I don't do this now, you know, I've got a great coach here. He's giving me everything I've ever asked for. You know what I mean? Like, you know what I mean? At what point do I stop point, stop pointing the fingers and start to own this thing? You know, this is my career. Yeah. You know, the excuses are for other people now. Yeah. It's time to put up a show. And so I like that pressure, you know, you put on yourself, but you have to set the stage too. You have to give yourself a reason to believe, you know, and it starts with that little process. So how'd that year go? Junior year, I went 25 feet went to the NCAA meet. Probably was that right. Yeah, yeah. I broke the stadium record at Western Oregon.

36:00Like, second, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm in that year and a half, I think I'm third all time in points, Gordon, the career at Portland State. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. The heft down there, did the long jump. I hurtle. They were in the 4x1, 4x4. Like, it was Portland State was everything I'd hoped. We didn't even have a track. You know the situation. Yeah, that's right. We didn't even have a track, but then we didn't need a track when we had cable. Yeah. Yeah. And then teammates like we had. So what is anything happening academically in regards to, I'm going to become a teacher, a physical therapist, a coach, anything happening there during this time? Yeah, sport management was heavy. I mean, sport management. Yeah. Yeah. So I transferred there and they didn't have a sport management degree. So I'm in finance and I'm in sport, sport administrative, exercise science, exercise science. So I'm kind of doing this double major thing with the finance and the exercise science. My dad's an accountant. So like, the numbers make sense to me too. I really enjoy the finance side.

37:00And so ended up, yeah, I interned with the AD and I did some marketing with the AD. Really great experience. Like just passing out stuff and I ran the halftime promotions for the basketball games and stuff. So I thought I liked marketing, you know, I thought I liked, he put me in the office and he beg, hey, you're Catholic, right? How about you call every church in town and get them to come to the basketball games. I was like, all right. Yeah, that's good. If you weren't Catholic, you couldn't have done that, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to protest it? No, you can't do it. Yeah, no, you go. That's awesome. So you graduate. What do we do next? And do we go to grad school, a job? Yeah, the whole time I kind of been hustling at Minimums. I've been slaying in burgers and beers at McMinimums. And so I kind of did that through that summer. But Seth had shoulder surgery in college. And during that year, he was out. He went and volunteered at this high school down the road. Lesal Catholic prep. And so when we graduated, Seth stayed on as a GA. Lesal needed a head coach. So I went and became the head coach at Lesal Catholic prep.

38:03He had a ball high school track team. Yeah. And that was so fun. I coached and it was like a little mini Jesuit. I went out there and I was a head track coach. And then the next year, my brother and I coach J.B. football together. What? I was the J.V. defensive coordinator. Yeah. This always is interesting to me. So you become a head high school coach. And by the way, the same thing. My first coach in J.B. was an assistant coach at a high school. The coach retired. I somehow convinced the school to make me that coach. I was 20 years old. I didn't even have to agree. And so I don't know how I would answer. I've never actually asked myself this question. Because this would never happen in any other sport. Dreduate right out of college and become the head football coach of Lesal Catholic. I just, my mind tells me that would not have happened. Not even the head basketball coach. The track coach were like, sure. You did track. You must know how to coach track and feel. This is kind of an odd way of asking this to kind of feel like, I hope I've earned some trust to ask this way. What gave you the audacity to think you could coach?

39:04Not only coach track and field right off the bat, but be the head coach. So you're responsible for however many of these young kids you had on your team. Yeah, they offered it to Seth. They wanted Seth. And then Seth's like, actually, I got this other thing. But my buddy is, I think. You're Seth and Jason. They're like, I find. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got really, I got a really good network of friends. And we had known some people. And I think the Jesuit connection was helpful being in that environment. And I put on my, I went all in on my materials too. I've wanted to be, I wanted to do a good job. And so I mean, I used to tell people unofficially, I had a degree in speed power and conditioning. I trained three years with, like, I put cable on such a pistol. Right. And I got to train with cable talk, you know what I mean? Like, I learned a little something along the way. I was team captain for two years. I still have a lot of sheets where cable, you know, with the U-town, he's like, John, teach the skips, you know what I mean? That just means so much to me. Yeah. Trust me for that stuff.

40:05So it's one thing to coach. And honestly, I'm with you 100%. You know, I think the world of cable and love him to death. In fact, I think he was guest number four on the podcast. He's an OG OG. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the originals, man, he's an original that was on the show. It's one thing to coach. And by the way, your coach in high school is not college and not that it doesn't translate. But you know, cable is a pretty smart guy. You actually had to dump some things down. If you're doing it properly, you had to dump some things to actually, that might not be true. Because cable does a really good job of much like his and my mentor, Boo, of, yeah, I'm teaching you complex stuff, but I'm teaching you that a sesame street level, if you will. So that probably not fair to say you had to dump it down because cable's a great teacher. But beyond the, you know, how to teach new people, how to three step, which that's its own skill, by the way, that I'm not sure you would know at that point. Beyond doing it yourself. But there's also the, I have these kids and I have to get them on a bus and they're 16, 17 years old.

41:06And they're going to be fighting or they're going to be, by the way, I remember when I was like, as a 16 year old, I've got a deal with that now. How did you think you were going to handle that as a, I mean, you're 22-ish at this point. Maybe, yeah, not even 23 probably. 22 at best. How did you think that you were either ready or that you could get yourself ready, if that makes sense? Yeah. I leaned on my mentors, just like anybody in my position, I went to people who had done it successfully in the past. And so I mean, I got binders of all my Portland state stuff. I've, every workout cable like handed me, I saved them for years. Now that's, that's 20 years old. But I went back to Jesuit and I asked Tom Rothenberger, the head coach there, like, how do you build a program? I took the team, his team rules and I came up with my team rules, but I thought the more concrete my team rules, my policies, the less decision making, we have to make up front. And so it was like, how did that work out? Fantastic. It was like, yeah, it was like a 14 page document. I mean, it was, yeah. It was way too long.

42:07Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm glad you said that. It sounds like, dude, you gave 14 year olds a 14 page like that could not have worked out perfectly. It was too long. When I was 22 years old though, they saw me as, there was a chance, I didn't want to risk looking unprofessional. And so I went so far in the other direction. I mean, I wore a suit sometimes. You know what I mean? Like, I wanted them to see that this is serious. That I'm the track coach and I'm not, I'm not the, the hand, nobody would take it. So no, I, I shared an office with the football coach and I wanted to see myself on the same level. It's yeah. I love that. Absolutely. That's the thing I asked when I say, how did you have the audacity to do this? Because I'm thinking, you know, not many 22 year olds are going to think that way. Mo, I shouldn't say most. I think a good number of, by the way, you know, I had coached like 20. So I'm, I'm sure I thought like, oh, well, I'm so close to them. That's a spot, a positive, a skill set. Let's lean into that. And it's like, well, there has to be separation here guys. Now, like, I love how you say like, I might have went a little too far on that separation, but there has to be some separation and not a little bit.

43:08So that's always my concern when I hear of young people getting, you might I tell my young, I mean, like right out of college and you're the head coach. If you're, if you'd have gone there and said, if you just said, I was the assistant coach, like, okay, you get to learn. You're going to make your own mistakes. But cool. You'll get someone right in front of you who's been teaching there for 10 years. You get to learn you hop right into it. That's hard. Dude, that's hard. What besides doing a 14 page rules set, uh, uh, being a mistake, what are the mistakes did you make that you look back now? You're like, oh, man, I wish I'd have done this a little differently. Gosh, it's a long time ago. I did it for one week. Yeah. Okay. That was I was going to ask how long. Yeah. I had nine assistants, you know, and I only crap. I know. I know how many kids we went from 70 to 110. Yeah. And so my job was kind of a program builder. And so I think a couple more years of doing this. I mean, gosh, that's a great question because it was a long time ago. Yeah. I'm sure I have a good answer for it. Yeah. So you're there for a year, then what do we do next? Well, I became a teacher there. They hired me as a teacher that next year.

44:09So I taught the freshman PE class. And that was a blast too. And so, um, yeah, I had a couple of classes there. And then at that point, I had taken my whole staff and we all did a level one together to everybody do a level really. Yeah. What? How did you even know about level ones? Oh, funny. Yeah. Let me take a step back. I asked Kaba. So I went from 22 to 25 feet in the long jump. Like I was like, Kaba, how did you do that? How did you do that? Any set coaching education? You have to take coaching education. And so I was like, okay, how do I do this? And I remember looking at Kaba. I was like, this man teaches coaches how to coach like he must really, you know, what I mean? You really know. Right? He's a coaches coach. Yeah. So that was really attracted to me. And I always thought that it was cool that he would go and teach these certification classes. So me and my whole staff did a level one. And then that year, I went and took a level two as a high school coach that summer with a boo, Kaba, Todd and Jim. Yeah. I've been, been, been on Jim. Jim Vanagan. Yeah. Where did you do your level one?

45:09Was that up there in the Portland area? It was at Rice University. Is that, oh, that's interesting. Okay. Do you remember who your teachers were back then? It was those four. Yeah. I took jumps with those four. Boo, Kaba, Todd, level, level one. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Level one was back at Canby High School. Yep. Tom Billbrook, Bud Rasmussen. Yeah. And Sprint's coach Brian, Brian, you know, I'm talking about coaches, the, the, the pair Olympians as well. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Brian Halt. Halt, Halt. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I was a, some clinic back when I was coaching high school in Chicago and I met Brian and he had a chart, a fly 30 chart, essentially. You know, if they run fly 30 and then a bunch of other marks, here's what you can kind of predict for their 100 and, and he was selling them for like three bucks and I didn't have cash on me. And I remember, I was like, dude, I will, like, if you trust me, I'll send you the money. And I didn't a fair, not send the money. I just forgot. And so that was 96, 95.

46:12I, and I don't know. I'm sure I just, you know, forgive me. It was through time I just forgot. Well, last year I met the Wisconsin track coaches clinic as MC and host and he's there speaking. And I walked up to him with $3 in my hand and I, and he didn't remember. You know, he was like, what, you know, what is this for? And I was like, dude, you like trusted me 25, 30 year, whatever it was, I go, and I never did send you the money, brother. I was like, and I paid my debts. And you remember too, if I wore on you, like, man, now to Brian's credit, because he's an amazing individual. He was like, you know what? This one's on me. And I was like, I'm going to. That was just, but that's why, yeah, he's a me. I, you know, I don't, I don't know that a lot of people know him. And I think that's wrong. Because he's a, he's a smart dude. He's done a lot of things. He's, that's what's kind of cool about our profession. There's a many amazing, amazing track and field coaches out there. But because it's such a big sport and so therefore a lot of participants and therefore a lot of coaches, it's hard to stand out, if you will, nationally.

47:13You know, I think there probably are regionally, there's a lot of pockets, but man, there's so many great people out there. And he is, he is one of them. Because yeah, he's from the Seattle area, right? If I remember right, yeah, yeah. Okay. So you take your whole staff to level one, you know, first of all, again, this shows the positive impact that coaches make. Caba made this impact on you. You were like, dude, how in the world did we go from 22 to 25? Is that coaching education? And you're like done. All right. You do that. Well, then I'm going to do that. And then you said, Hey, whole staff, we're going. And that's so cool. I love that. That had to really like ramp up the coaching there at that school for them. Yeah. I mean, we were able to speak the same language. And I think once you get out of the cage and you start to use the same vernacular. And this is what we're trying to do is speed power coaches. This is our objective as a entire entity of subsection of the events, you know, endurance is trying to do this. And basically all the speed power folks are trying to do the same type of thing. Yeah. That's cool. Now I said you did it for a year, but then they hired just teachers. I mean, you were there as a teacher and you didn't coach track the next year?

48:15No, it was in the fall. So I got hired in the spring coach through the spring next summer. I'm running the summer strengthening conditioning program. I'm getting ready to coach JB football. My brother and I are out there. I taught through the fall. And then about halfway through maybe I got hired at university. And so I didn't have a master's degree at this point. And you get the base scale jumps up so significantly with the master's degree as a teacher. So it's a private Catholic school. So you didn't have to have a teaching degree or anything. Right. So where did you get hired? I think you just said university Eastern Washington was that a plan, meaning like, okay, this is cool. I like this coaching thing. I need to be coaching college. And if I want to be full time, no, not at all. So landscape in 2008 was pretty uncertain, you know, in terms of what was going on economically. Oh, right, right, right. I met a, I met a small Catholic school and they're having trouble raising money. And they had cut my course load down from, you know, full time to point eight. I'm just wondering, you know, it was a great spot.

49:16But Eastern gives free, not free, but a $5 master's degree for employees. And so I'm looking at it and I could take a class per term. I can go and finally get my master's. That's been a lifelong goal and go out to Eastern and, you know, get started with that. It's in the big sky. And I'm watching Seth coach at Portland State, you know what I mean? And I'm on yellow school buses and he's on a flight to New York. And you know what I mean? It was just like, man, I missed that. I missed high performance, you know, yeah. Well, what would I school seen? But what did you mean Eastern Washington had a $5 master's? What for faculty? Yeah, it's basically free. You can take one one class per term for free. And it's just a, it's just a, a staff perk that you're in. That's cool. You're in education. Yeah. Yeah. So you were hired full time. Yep. And then so you're in getting figured, wow. So they call, they called Kaba and said, who do you know that can coach jumps? You know, and Kaba said, well, I got this guy John. Wow. So he's got a level two. He's done a level one. He's got a level two. He's 23 years old.

50:17He used to compete in the big sky. So right after your level one, you jumped to that summer's level two. Yep. Okay. And that was at Rice. Yep. Okay. That's funny. And that was when we still, because you said this is, you know, 07 ish at that point, right? 0708. So boo is still it's really, in fact, probably right after that was when the big split. If you're in coaching education, you know, the big split when it all went down. So you still had boo. So you did jumps. Dude, that course changed my life. I was at Ball State University and, you know, I wanted to be the premier Sprintz jumps and hurdles coach. And so I signed up for level two of Sprintz jumps and hurdles. And Mike Corn calls me, you know, Mike was running coaches that back then and says, hey, the course filled up, but I got a spot in jumps. And I was like, oh, bro, I don't want to, you know, I know I got a coach at here, but I don't want to do that. And he goes, listen, man, he goes, you will learn just as much about Sprintz doing this jumps course then Sprint. He goes, and I'm not knocking the Sprintz score.

51:17You'll learn, you know, it's amazing. People didn't shave her and all those guys. He goes, he goes, trust me. And you know, and I, I've known Mike for a long time at that point. I was like, I do. And I knew how important to your point about coaching education. I knew how important it was to have the next step. So level two in this case, I was like, I do it all doing. So I drove from Munscene, D.N. to Boise State, changed my life. One of one I met Steve Dudley, who had a dippi, or me at Mississippi State, a couple of years later, to having boo teach you. Like you know, and you know this because you had this experience. There is nothing like that. And I think Kable would even say this because I was going to say Kable is a great teacher. And boo's just better. And that is not a knock on Kable, brother. That is just boo is an unbelievable teacher. I was and have been in still am fearful of the pole vault. I got, I can't coach it. Never will. When he went over pole vault in that class, just a part of me was like, you know what, bro? I don't know. Maybe I can't coach this thing. I was like, look what he's drawn to stick figures. Like, I don't know, man, maybe I can do the look. Look at what he's saying.

52:18Yeah. No, I know. Luckily for all pole vaulters, I did not step up to that. But I, that was in the middle. I had a 10 year career. When you compare the last five year results that I had from my kids, specifically in the Longer and Triple Jump, but overall in sprints and everything to the first five years, it's not in day. And that's a decent kids my first five year. Second five years, bro. And I didn't do anything different, but what we learned in level two, you would have thought, I mean, I thought I was pretty good too, man. I was like, man, I'm kind of smart. This guy boo made me smart. I'm, but it's amazing. So I was simple and straightforward. I love that. Was it like, I just, I get giddy about the level two. What was that experience like being in the classroom and, you know, having cable talk and Jimmy Vee and Todd, you know, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I didn't want to let cable down because I knew he pulled strings to get me in. And so he told me you got to read these four books and read them twice. And I was like, yes, sir. You know, I took those and then you had to take the test. You had to take the in person sports science test in person.

53:19You know, biomechanics. Oh, yeah, bro. And if you failed, well, you had to come, like, talk to him in person and that was a drinking bear and you've got to go, you've got to go. You would go to the social in between and be like, oh, John's not here. You know what that means? He failed. And it was probably the biomechanics because that was what got everybody. Uh, I forgot because now they do it. Like you do that online, like separate, right? You don't know, man, there ain't nothing like. In person, we had the, like, the teachers, I don't think people realize this. The teachers of that first part, the buy what was it? Biology, psychology, yeah, biomechanics, uh, motor, uh, motor learning. There's a lot of that. There's like three or four. Physiology. Yeah. They weren't taught by track coaches. No. I remember the biomechanics was taught by like some professor from SC, like he was a former track athlete, but like, this wasn't, this wasn't me and John trying to teach this stuff. No, I got my Meg Stone, Mike Stone. Meg Stone. Yeah. Yeah. He'll presentation. Yeah. They were smart people and I'm just a dumb track coach going, oh, okay.

54:24That was tough, dude. And then you finally get to the part you, you know, I'm here for and boo steps up and just starts writing his freaking stick figures and telling you how it's done and it's amazing. Then you got to try to present in front of you. You know what I mean? I got to present in front of my college coach. That's right. I forgot about the, my mentors, mentor. Did you have, you know, they put you in groups? Did they, did you have a good group? You kidding me, Mike. It was me Nick Peterson. Garrett Breckner and he was a VMI and then, uh, gosh, I'm forgetting his name right now, but we're still like Facebook friends. But no, I mean, it was. Loam. I'm so mad at you. Some of the people that I met along the way, like my roommate and true of the VISTA with Keith, Thurston, you know what I mean? Like it, some of the better coaches in the game. No way the Yahoo's that I had in my group are still coaching. There's no way. I remember as we're doing our group and, you know, I know this assignment, you know, and, and I'm, and I'm listening to it.

55:25I'm like, like they wanted to, you know, you have to write out the training schedule. And it's nothing like we just got, we just got taught. Like it's nothing. And I'm like, guy, what do you mean you want to do? I'm making up something here. Uh, repeat 400s. Like nowhere did boo say to do that. And I think it was the opposite. And so I quickly was like, okay, because I don't want my name attached to this. I was like, I'll do, in fact, this actually sets me up for first of my career. And I think about it. I'll do the intro. I'll set up. And I'll do the warm up. And then you do this part and you do that part. And so I got up there. I was like, oh, here's our group and here's our athlete. Here's what we're thinking. And so here's the warm up. And everybody's like, oh, yeah, you know, not that I'm a genius, but you know, everybody's like, oh, good, you know, boo's like, yeah, that's exactly what I taught. And then it would go into the work on. And I would just step to the side and be like, all right, man, you know, it's I am not speaking at all, brother. You know, I was like, keep all the good feelings to my side before you start tearing into us. It was just so aggravating because it's like you didn't listen, guys. Like what are you to do? And now we got to stand in front of the stage, not only in front of them, but your peers.

56:26So I'm jealous of you, bro. When you see Nick Peterson, I'm like, well, then they don't man. Yeah. I got pictures back. So I'm trying to remember my group project versus my roommate sometimes I might be getting confused. I'm like, sweet mates, you know what I mean? Yeah. The people I still stay in touch with. That's so cool. So I was the high school head coach and he was a GA at Nebraska. And I've still got like this hard drive of like, because he worked, he was with Chris Grimes at Nebraska. And so I'm like, man, so I get grimes and stuff. Here, you can have some of K-bist stuff. I get grimes and so those hard drive homes. Yeah. I tell them good coaches. I encourage people, whether it's level two through USATF, which still has amazing teachers and great program and your USTF CCA academies, which now boo oversees that and some great teacher, you got to do something. I don't care what you do. I honestly don't care what you do. I don't have a preference over that or even altists, you know, they do a great job. But you got to be doing something for two reasons. One is your own like, however good you think you are a coach today, you have to believe,

57:26you have to know that that is not the epitome of your coaching. You have a lot to get better. So the only way to do that is to go through a combination of official and unofficial coaching education. The second reason is you're going to meet so many people that are going to open your eyes to other experiences. One of them might hire you one day. You might hire them one day. And even if you're high school coach teaching, you're like, well, dude, I'm in Houston. What's it matter if I meet a guy from New York that guy might coach college, you're going to have a kid being recruited by them one day. I mean, there's just nothing bad. Zero bad happens out of going to these things and expanding your network. Zero, zero bad happens, only positive things. Exactly what you said happened. I took a level, I think I did my ITC. So I became an instructor for coaching. Yeah, same. Yeah. Are we twins? Oh my god. Well, no, you know how I know we're not twins. You you jump 25 feet brother. I think that might be my PR in the triple jump. Just saying. I'm going to be 25 feet in the shot. Yeah, not even get that.

58:27No, no, no, no. No, no, no. So, but I had a pact. I'm out of Eastern and I'm taking my level two and there's a guy in New York and he goes, if we can get together, I'm going to bring you out to New York and you're going to do a level one with me and I was like, man, I'd be great to go to New York. And then the next year I'm coaching at West Point. You know what I mean? So I'm in New York, but it was Troy Angle, who was the national director of coaching education. Yeah, Troy is amazing. I became the inland Northwest chair of coaching education for our association. We hosted our first level one class in like 11 years and Dave Mills came out and did that class with me. But then Troy saw what we were doing and he hired me out at West Point and I was the jumps coach. We said, I want to hire you to coach Paul Valton. I said, that's great. But yeah, just one problem. I've never coached Paul Valton. So you go from Eastern Washington to West Point. How long were you at Eastern Washington? Four years. So you got your you got your graduate degree? No, no, no. No, one class of term. I didn't finish it. Yeah, no, one class of term and it started after your first year. So after you have one, you take one.

59:29So I took six graduate school classes, but it was halfway done. What discipline were you working towards? Sport management. Yeah, perfect. Okay. And so from there to West Point. No. Now that's tough because you're still really in your infancy of coaching here. And like you really kind of still don't know things. You're still kind of figuring it all out. And West Point, these military academies, it's unbelievable. I've been so enjoyed with our interviews from Military Academy and Air Force Academy. It's really quite amazing. It's a different type of coaching. How did you handle West Point? That's different. Yeah, it's very different from a guy from Portland, Oregon. You know what I mean? We don't have military bases anywhere around us. No, I mean, obviously it was the honor of a lifetime. But no, Troy was so patient with me. He brought me into coach Paul Valton. And there's, you know, that's one event that the Army Navy do. And also did the cap on HEPTAP one. So there was no other real administrative assignments other than like learn how to coach Paul Valton, learn the military. He really got me like he wanted me to do a shadow of a tactical officer, one of the company

1:00:32TAC officers. Awesome experience. No, he just wanted me to learn the culture and the routine and the battle rhythm, so to speak. So didn't you have to, I thought all Oliver coaches as well have to coach or have to teach a class. Did you have to teach a class? No, that had expired a couple years earlier. Yeah, they get the Naval Academy. They were teaching classes, maybe Air Force, but because of how West Point structured their athletic department, it was good that we didn't have to teach a class, but the benefits weren't quite military benefits. Sure, sure. Yeah, no, it was, we didn't have to teach at that point. What about recruiting? Well, you get people to pick up. That's for sure. I mean, you get, you get the first hole. You hope. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back in the day, we had the advantage of calling juniors, you know, and we could call juniors a year ahead of time. And so again, we were calling superstars and they were like, oh my gosh, this is an honor at West Point. I've always heard of West Point. This is amazing. But, you know, you got a number of this qualifiers. If they've taken the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

1:01:35ADD medicine and stuff like that, that can, you know, negate some of their academic scores and stuff like that. The medical, the kids that wanted to be at West Point, kids that qualified academically and athletically, sometimes disqualified medically from things that you never thought about at Eastern, you know, right, right. But no, we had it. We had it. Every, every school has their pool of kids. And we had our pool of kids that we had to compete against Air Force and Naval Academy and the M.I. Marshmurine, all the Coast Guard, all those schools. We had the, uh, Thur's coach Ryan, uh, on the, uh, podcast, not Ryan, um, gosh. Ryan was there. Yeah. And I mixed up. It's like Ryan was there. No. Sorry. You know, as we get to near 400 episodes, my memory is not all that good. I don't remember everyone by name, but we had the Thur's coach that, gosh, I'm really sad because I can see his face. He was, he was, he is awesome. Um, and he was talking about, he was an outsider. I mean, he wasn't military. Kind of similar to you, you know, uh, but he talked about the Army Navy dual meet and just,

1:02:36like, it's special. What was your experience with that? Oh, man, I mean, they, they advertised it as like track and field matters here. And I, I coach Mike Smith became the head coach, my third year there. And he's like, I want to be somewhere where track matters, where track is important, where there's energy and I think amazing things happen when there's meaning behind the event. But when you've got three star generals pop, you know, veins popping out of their head because they're screaming and like, uh, you know, careers are on the line. You know what I mean? Kids like the pride is on the line. There's beaten Navy everywhere. It's in grain. So championship track is the most fun track. And that was our championship, you know, that's cool. Oh, how many years were you there? How many seasons? Six years. So 12 Army navies. Yes, sir. What was your record? Oh, not, not that man. We didn't beat him all that often. Yeah. Uh, we blitzed him a little bit. Mike came in. We brought in like 80 recruits that, that year, like Mike taught me out of a crew, man.

1:03:37Mike is a machine at recruiting. And so we were making hundreds of, I mean, across our staff, we were raking like 1200 phone calls. That's what I've heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We would have competitions to see how many numbers we could accumulate. And it was, we were getting after it. And so, uh, no, we blitzed him for a little bit and they brought in this guy. Jamie. They were pretty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's also when I was like, where does Jamie insert himself here? Yeah. Here's what's interesting about that. You know, you tell me Jamie's amazing. Mike is amazing. He's two juggernauts going at it, by the way. Yes. Those are big time dudes, man. I don't care if you only. He's moved. Yes. Yes. Yes. So you add that to it. You know what I mean? It doesn't have to be Army Navy. If Jamie and Mike got together and Mike, we're going to build a track team. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Absolutely. That would be amazing. Uh, so six years though, so you had to like the area. And I mean, and you kind of don't know much. You have the Eastern Washington to, um, uh, compare it to, but you know, you weren't at some other schools. We're going to talk here. Uh, it is different coaching and our, for many reasons, not only, you know, the phone calls

1:04:42and, uh, the type of kid that you have to recruit there, uh, mission standards, things like that, but also like, man, these are kids that are potentially going to go to war. Like you're in the military. Like that's a college is serious. Military is serious. Sir, so it's, it's a different ballgame there. Uh, but you must have liked it. You stayed six years there, man. That's a good, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, every year, I was trusted to increase my responsibilities every year. So you're one coach and pole vaulted the Catholic lawn, you're two, I'm coaching jumps, you're three, I'm coaching jumps, sprints, hurdles, multi-s pole vault. You're five. I think, you know, we brought in another sprints coach. I'm sharing those responsibilities, but no, it was great. I mean, we continue to, you know, I saw the progress and I saw the improvement. It was fun to be a part of that. And you know, like once you're, once you're a senior assistant, like the level of responsibility, it feels good, you know, it feels good to know the place, you know, to know who to talk to about things. Right. Like first three years of any job or top, because you don't even know who to pick up the phone to ask.

1:05:42So, um, no, but I, I, I won't, I won't sit here and pretend I wasn't somewhat desperately trying to apply for jobs back west. Yeah, so sure. Yeah. Um, my dad was in deteriorating health and so it was, it was important for me to like get west. Yeah. So I was applying for jobs. I remember, I was, remember being in the Eastern and Marcia McLeanburg with my boss and she said, if you ever want to be the head coach here, you have to leave and come back. You're not going to be promoted from within probably, you know, you got to go get other experiences. And so in my head, I thought I'd be two or three years in New York, come back easy. Get a job in Washington, Oregon, no problem, but it's a long time. Right. It's a long time. Yeah. So where do you go after Army? Yeah, I went to Rice University. Okay. I mean, I guess that is more west than New York, but maybe you trade the same, whatever latitude or whatever. I'm not smart enough to know that horizontal to you now, Southern, the South. How in the world do you get to Rice? If cable, cable was my, my facilitator every job, every job I've had.

1:06:44It was somebody gives cable a call and cable calls me. He said, Johnny, how much money do you make? And I was like, cable, what's the job? What do you, what do you want to get to the point? How much money do you make? And no, I always laughed about that. But no, it was West Region. And that was important to me to start competing back on the West Region. Okay. And make connections back with, you know, Oregon, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. It was an easier flight. It was a cheaper flight. It was a little bit, you know, I was just coaching the women there and I really, really enjoyed Jim. And he found me to coach. He wanted somebody to coach Sprint's and jumps. So I walked in and I had a 229, 200 girl and a 43 foot triple jump girl. And it was like, man, this is awesome. Let's go. Yeah, absolutely. I was in New York, my wife finished up her doctorate. She's a sports physical therapist and she went to New York, man. Yeah. Wow, dude. Holy cow. Yeah. Holy. What a race is always interesting to me. You know, I know Jim. And he either, he just retired or just went to the hall of fame.

1:07:47Yeah. Okay. And I never really got to know Jim very well. He always highly regarded. It's an interesting school. In fact, we were just flying into Houston for the Texas high school coaches show. We flew over rice. We're like, oh, there's right. Like we were, it's very distinct to point out what was it like there? Because that's a different like, I'm always fascinated with someone who can go from Washington, I'm sorry, Oregon, East Washington to New York. That's a different culture, different weather. It's just different. And now you do that. Now you go down to Houston. That is a different weather culture. How did you assimilate? How did that work out? Yeah. All along the way, you're just building skills of adaptability. You know, you're learning like, oh, what do I need to hold on to and what can I let go? And so I got down there and it's a whole different group of kids. I'm coaching women for the first time. It's just Jim and I, you know what I mean? And then there was another assistant helping out. But we only get six admission slots and 35 women on the team. And at Army, we brought an 80 freshman one year.

1:08:50You know, this is a whole different game. Like we've got, I've got 11 kids versus the 60 I was working with at Army. Got 11 kids and I can't miss, you know, like every kid is going to be, you know, the difference. And so I got to do a whole lot. That was really attractive to be able to do one on one, two on one versus 14 on one. Right. Right. Even your scholarship and right because, you know, the military kind of is like, yeah, if you get any accepted, it's all taken care of. You're going to have an allotment at Rice and you've got to figure out, do I do 10% here, 100% here and everything in between? Yeah, to really, which you've been familiar with at least in Washington, but you got to get back after six years to that reality. The price tag is different. Yeah. Yeah, price tag. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. In a small school as well, which can have as advantages, of course. How did you navigate that? I mean, it is an expensive school, if I remember correctly. It's a small school. It's Division one. So you still got to, you got to have that 43 foot triple jumper. How did you handle that side of things? Yeah, I mean, just with Jim, you know, Jim had been doing it for 30 years and he worked

1:09:53for Victor Lopez who had been doing it before him. So there was only two ways of doing things, you know what I mean? And so it was really coming in and like, here's what we've done, you know, it wasn't a lot of life. Let's reinvent the wheel. Got it. I just stepped in and was just a sponge of, you know, Jim, teach me how things are done here because they had been successful, you know, experience a lot of different levels of, you know, different conferences and different levels of, you know, individual success, team success. But, you know, a lot of listening and just trying to, like, you know, I tried to come on a little slower, you know what I mean? I tried to come on a little slower, let the athletes come to me a little more, you know, less imposing of the system. And I think that's a good way to handle your transition to an any new spot. It's like, okay, obviously there's people that have been here long before I have. There's obviously some success here. Let's see what works and not just assume that I have all the answers right off the bat. My experience, you know, I coached for 10 years and was at five different institutions. And this may not be your experience.

1:10:54My experience is that everywhere I went, I learned something whether that was, I learned more about recruiting or, you know, this was my coaching education time period where I learned how important that was and so did more of that or I learned, you know, my last place at Mississippi State, I learned about the political side of track and field. What did you at Rice? What was, you know, you look back at it and you're like, you know, what I really learned? And then there were a thousand things you learned. But it's like, you know, what I've, I said to this day, you, I learned this. Anything coming to mind there at Rice? Well, I, going back to our original conversation, Jim was so big picture. And he was so much about the landscape of track and field and like the universal context that we would go to convention and he would just, he would just be pulling his hair out that we're talking about seemingly minute details when we could talk about adding assistant coaches, adding, you know, to mean a mandatory language for pole vault supervision or whatever, mandatory language for minimum acceptable implements and, you know, all these different recommendations

1:11:55that we could put forth to administrators to really advance our sport as a whole. No, I mean, Jim was all about how do we add value to Rice? That was just in his heart, but in my business mind, it was like, oh, a value add is a value add. So how do you get not just your AD to see you as valuable, but your school president to see you as valuable? And for him, it was about the people you brought into the community and the character and the representation that you exhibited out in the community. It was not about winning. It was about being professional and representing Rice at the highest level. And a part of that is being good at track. Right. Right. Yeah, a part. Right. When you talk about the community and the type of people that he brought into Rice, are you talking about like, like, was he, I'm going to say showing off and that don't mean that in a negative way, but like, oh, look, one of our kids that we brought in is the school president, you know, school student body president. This one started a nonprofit here in Houston, like that kind of bringing kids into the community. Yes, absolutely.

1:12:56And it was as much about what you can do, you know, beyond like all American to him or the Joyce Pounds Hardy Award, which was like the academic athletic woman of the year. You know what I mean? They were both one and the same to him, you know, if you want a character award or we had a finalist for the woman of the year, NCAA woman of the year, oh, it was so proud, you know, because these are character awards. Yeah. Lots of crummy people can be fast and that's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Being fast isn't, you know, something that can be developed. It's more or less. Yeah. In some ways, it's a name, you know, but yeah, these are, these are awards of the, of the heart. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating to me, because you know, it's a little bit of a tug of war of, you know, we are in a sport, right? So winning is important, right? I mean, you know, that's what the ultimate of sport is. But I always think about like all the stuff that we talk about, I don't tell me about everything from heck, a lot of stuff we talk about on the podcast here, track clinics, presentations, et cetera.

1:13:56We always talk, the bulk of talk is about this 1%. You know, how do we, how do we create more Olympians? How do we create more, uh, shakari Richardson's and how do we create more Noah Liles and stuff? And it's like, dude, that is the point one of point one. You are as likely to go through your entire career and never have that. So if 99.9% of the kids that you're going to have been entrusted to you through your program are not going to go on to become that Olympian, then shouldn't we really focus on them? Like when you talk about maximizing what's in front of you, shouldn't we, that doesn't mean you don't try to make them faster or jump farther and things like that. But talking about, you know, culture and careers and making more coaches and teachers and things like that, like shouldn't that be the bulk of what we talk? I've never gone to a track clinic and the presentation is something like, um, how to build character in your athletes. And I'm not talking about, uh, you know, having them shake the competitors hands, I'm talking about they go and do more volunteer hours. I mean, that may be too long of a presentation title, but you can wordsmith that.

1:14:57Uh, but that's it. That is that now I'm a remiss, uh, or a miss, uh, that I didn't know Jim better because I love this. That guy affected so many young people positively that they are now out in society doing great things because of his priorities weren't necessarily in throwing the javelin 200 and something feet necessarily. Yes. Absolutely. And what that, that was the, the soil to the garden, right? The culture behind everything and what he created was an environment where people wanted to be around, right? And this changed my, like at Easter and I felt like I had to be a disciplinarian because Kable had to be that for me, right? That's what I needed was being a disciplinarian. I get to West Point and they don't need to be disciplinary. You know what I mean? I can be fun and hey, please come back. You know what I mean? I want you to come back tomorrow. So I get down to rice and it gyms, one of Jim's motto is, never give up on a kid. And so he's only had two kids in this whole career that didn't graduate from rice. You know what I mean?

1:15:58Or didn't graduate from college. He's like, you know, he never gives up on you. Once he brings you in, your, your his responsibility, even if you transfer, he's going to like kind of track you it and make sure you're doing okay. You know what I mean? Like, but that created an environment that people wanted to be around, talented and not talented. But at the end of the day, people want to be around like inspiring people. Yeah. Passion is hard to come by nowadays. Passion is it comes. He loves people the element, you know, so it's fun to be around. So that's cool. I love that. How many years at rice? Five. And where'd you go next? Here. Oh, okay. All right. So, okay, because I was about to say, you seem like this is a great fit with you and Jim and you and rice. And I know it's not back home yet, necessarily. It's like, well, this seems like a good fit. What in the world would you leave for? Yeah. Okay. Back home is a big draw. My wife and I had a deal that we wanted four things. We wanted to be near her family, near my family. I wanted a great fulfilling job and she wanted a great fulfilling job.

1:16:58If we got three out of those four things, we were good, you know what I mean? And so she got a job. She got a job at Oregon State. And in terms of life, and this is why I'm big into like the life dynamic too with coaches and balance and the broad spectrum of mental health and what all the different things mental health means. It's just so it's such a broad concept. But anyway, mental health is so important with coaches like my dad passed away when I was in Houston. It's been 11 years of me trying to get back west and I felt like a failure about three months before my dad died. My son was born. And so they didn't have a chance to I'm sorry, if my dad died before my son, before my son was born. And so my dad was aware that I was going to have a baby, but he never, they never got to meet man. You know what I mean? So my wife got a job at Oregon State working in PT. And so I told Jim I'm moving, man, I'm getting out of coaching. I'm going to go about, I'm going to buy a pole vault pit from Mike. I'm going to start. I'm going to start my own little pole vault. I've seen people do really well doing club pole vault thing. I'm just going to go down and do that. And so I moved to Corvallis and I'm just going to give it up and be a stay home dad.

1:18:00Wow. Hold on. Two weeks later, this job came open in my wife's hometown. We've got a click on that for a second because you know, I don't think ego is bad. I think bad ego is bad. And ego amongst coaches and you know, again, in society in general, the male, the husband part of the relationship family as well for you. I mean, you are a rice you come on, dude. That's all the things that we talk about. D1 big city Houston, all this kind of stuff. And you were like, all right, man, I'm out of it. I'm going to go support my wife. I've got a child. I'm going to take care of my child and I'll figure something out. Pole vault camp, whatever. And you did it. And I'm care that two weeks later, this job opened up in that changing because life changes. But that you, like you could easily like, hey, look, so we talked to at least three out of four things. So maybe one of those things that we miss out on is you don't have a great career. You know, you don't get this job at Corvallis. You know, that could have been a conversation between you two and maybe it was.

1:19:01That's amazing, dude. You were, I think, I think some coaches coach because they're running from something. We'll never say it out loud. We're running from the responsibilities of family. We're running from the responsibilities of a husband. You exemplify like, hey, this is a career and it's very important to me. I love being a coach and I love helping young people. But I'm a father. But these other roles, a father, husband, son are more important. And I think that's super valuable. So, maybe Bravo to you for even making that decision, dude. That's crazy. It's, it's, well, here's the, remember who my roommate, my college roommate was, where he's coaching. So I go back, I'm in the coaches box at the NCAA meet with, with Seth. I said, hey, Seth, man, this is it. This might ask me, my, my girl's third met. I was like, this is it. I'm out. And she's like, what do you mean you're out? Right, right. I'm moving back to Corvallis and he goes, bro, come volunteer with me. I was like, well, maybe a, maybe quite, maybe you know, I'm just kidding. No, there was, there was options in the area.

1:20:02There's good jacket area. But now I don't, I don't subscribe to student athlete. I don't think student athlete is a, is a, is a, is a appropriate term for all the things that these kids are. I call them student athlete, daughter, sister, community member, girlfriend, student. You don't mean you're a friend, a role model to somebody. So the, we're not just, and they say like student first, athlete second. No, no, no, we're humans. That means we're 50 different things at once. That's right. Yeah, lots of rules. That's right. Yeah. So you move back to Corvallis, but then two weeks later, a phone call happens or what, what, how does this come about? It was just a posting, man. It's the only job I've ever seen posted that I applied for and successfully got. You know, it's all worth a mouth. I saw it posting, man. And I'm like, it's my wife's hometown. You know, I'd always known of the year before I left, I applied for the Eastern job and didn't get. And I always wanted to go back to Eastern. Right. And I'm like, man, I'm never going to, you know, I'm never going to get back to Washington

1:21:04ever. I came back, you know, I go to Corvallis, I get this job, I get this offer, I come up here and do the interview. And we've got a new outdoor track. We've got a new indoor sprint straight away. We've got treadmills. We've got a brand new weight room. We've got scholarship support like this is the coaching stipend. And this is, this is good. We can be good here. Yeah, it inherited some good kids and got off there. So you got the job there that wife get a job and I think you said PT, she's going to PT job that she likes. Yeah. Well, yeah, we're big on commitment. And so she stayed at Corvallis for a year and did her, she finished her contract for the year down there. I'm a job here. Yeah. Where did you had a three month old when you moved? Where did the little one stay with you or her? We did back and forth basically one weekend a month. He was up with me and then one weekend a month I was down there. So finally, as far as those five hours, you know, that's a, that's all. Dude, bravo to you guys. That's hard. It's hard when you're together doing stuff.

1:22:06Especially with a new child and to do it with a five hour whole, we count bravo to you two, man. That's, that's hard. I know there were some hard times there. You're getting closer and we're talking about coaches like you find your fit, you know I mean, it doesn't mean it's a school that's on ESPN every week. But you find what makes sense for you. Yeah. You know, you just don't give it up. Yeah. Yeah. When you got the job there at Central Washington, was it the head coaching? Yeah. Yeah. So what do you do? You've been an assistant a lot of great places. I'll just assume that one year of head high school coach probably doesn't apply too much to what you're doing there at Central Washington. What's the first phone call you make? Hey, man, I got this job. I'm the head guy. What do I need to know? Who's the first person you call? Oh, man, it was, it was most of my mentors. It was, it was, it was K-Bug and it was, it was Jim, you know what I mean? It was like, all right, what are we doing? And it was, it was to the staff that was here. I wanted to give the staff that was, that was here as much of an opportunity to, to stay

1:23:10on and teach me things. So no, I was going to come on a coach cross country, you know. We had it, there was a woman that was here was doing a great job in the speed power. I was going to fill whatever role needed to be filled here and then let her keep doing with the speed power thing, even though that's my bread and butter. Yeah, I'm not going to disrupt things too much. They got a system that's working for him. So she ended up not staying around. So I got to move to my natural event area and, and to make a hire where I heard coach Matt Layton, who was that Air Force Academy when I was at West Point. He was at North Texas when I was at Rice and so he and I've been, you know, I love that. How many years have you been in the head coach there now? Just finished my third. Okay. This is the kind of two questions I ask every person when they get their first head coaching job. So, because, you know, you've been an assistant and that's its own thing. There's, there's complexities to that. You have a lot of head coaches in front of you that you've seen do some things that you're like, I really like that. And then maybe some of the things like, maybe I wouldn't do it that way. And you kind of maybe always have a vision, whether it's a large vision or small vision

1:24:13of like, here's how I would do things. But you don't know until you actually sit in that chair. You think you might know, you were at West Point for six years. You may think you knew what that head coach was actually had to go through, but you went in that chair. There were things that you had no vision of what was occurring that they had to be responsible for. So, you get to, you got named the head coach of Central Washington. You go in and get your feet wet. What was, as you look back now, you've only been there three years. That's a pretty short amount of time. When you look back at it now, what was something that you thought, like, okay, I'm the head coach, this might be a little challenging for me because you know, as a head coach, there's so many things you've got to do, staffing, equipment. You might start being coming on committees to hire the basketball coach because you know, you have responsibilities when they have let it department now, alumni, fundraising. There's just, I mean, the list goes on and on and on, meeting with the academics, meeting with trainers. What's something that you thought? Because you've seen there's some fairly self-awareness. I feel like you might have had this thought, like, oh, all right, I'm not great at this.

1:25:14This is going to be a little struggle for me, but it actually, you know, you're in your three. You're like, you know, it actually wasn't all that hard. I learned it pretty quickly. Anything come to mind? Well, man, it was, it was number one is finding people that, like, filled the weaknesses that I know I have, you know, and that's some things with, like, which I'm about technology. But some of these guys are so good with Canva now and the graphics. What would take me three hours takes them two minutes, you know? So that's just a good, efficient use of time, like, and so I hope people that are great communicators, great recruiters and really, really organized because mopping up this organization is time consuming, you know, so good people that are good with systems that are organized that are, you know, that are, you know, willing to learn new software systems. It's not that you know the software systems that exist now. It's, okay, we're going to move to teamwork's next. How quickly can you learn that or how willing are you to learn new systems? Because the older I get, the more resistant I am to change. I just feel it, you know, I don't want to learn a new system, but no, I think it's a people first industry.

1:26:14So people that in this goes down to my recruiting philosophy of rice and I want people that want to be here. I want people that have a reason to be here and have a connection to be here because that reason gets them out of bed, you know, every day. People that have a tie to the community that have a reason, you know, when I get my recruiting emails, I want to see like, hey, not just I've looked into Central and I really like the results, but like, hey, I like the Mland Northwest. There's a lot of good hiking around there. My grandma lives in Spokane, you know, I'm looking to move out of the South. I wanted to, you know, I'm young, I wanted to try something, whatever it is, whatever it is. Whatever it is, you said it can like what you like about these things, but no, I guess I could have gone off on a tangent there, but yeah, that's all good. So the reverse question, kind of the same question, but in the reverse. So what did you think like, oh, man, this is going to be easy. Like I've been prepping this for my whole life. And then you get in the big boy chair, they're like, oh, actually, it was a little tougher. I didn't know I had to describe everything in my budget or whatever, you know, what was something that you thought? Yeah. No, budgeting has been absolutely a challenge. And I mean, I understand in your chain of command and who you're reporting to and who they report to

1:27:18and where the decisions ultimately come from. I remember early on in my, I felt like I did a good job of expressing my stance on different things to my sports administrator, but it was their job to communicate it up to the AD, who communicated it up to the budget office, you know what I mean? And things can get lost in telephone there. So yeah, firm grasp for a budget, but I think team rules are really interesting, like concept, you know what I mean? Like how much flexibility to provide yourself and how much rigidity? Because there's so much, you got to create rules for the future, not for the past, you know? And so how do you, what corners do you inadvertently back yourself into because of your policies? And so I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but I've gone more to a value-based system. You know, we're about, we're about respect. And you know, if this is an example of you disrespecting our equipment or our logo or our brand, you know, we want to pursue values of excellence and honesty, you know, and Mike, you're not being honest with yourself right now. You're hurt, you probably shouldn't be, you know what I mean? Like, so going back from those type of things and making it more of a value-based system.

1:28:20So we want to aspire, not avoid punishment, so aspire for different things. So, yeah. So you, what started out as a 14-page rule document, now you're down to... Ten commandments, no, I'm just kidding. No, it's just a couple of values and they change every year. You know what I mean? We want to be deliberately inclusive. We want to be fearless, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. We want to be spontaneous and passionate, you know? Just all these different like kind of agitists for the year. Yeah, I love that. I'm sorry. I think, you know, you're in a precarious situation dealing with 18 to 22 year olds. You don't have adults there, but they're not kids. And it's that transition period, which is very vital. And by the way, the same thing that you're working on with them, everything else is working you know, society, finances, their parents, you know, it's... You know, we used to say, you know, I've trade by itself with my 20 year old self in a heartbeat. Now I'm like, you know, I don't think I'm okay actually. I don't know if I really want to do that.

1:29:21There's so many topics we could talk about, John. We brought up something that I thought we didn't talk about during pre interview. But I'm curious to get your thoughts on it because it was a passion of mine when I was a coach and so therefore still continues to be like something I'm super interested in. How do you handle... Tell me about... You talk about values and philosophy. Tell me what your values and you started touching to it a little bit here about recruiting. And whether that's the whole game. So high schools versus transfer portals, etc. What are you... Like, I'm always trying to help kind of like myth bust what some high school coaches think and what some college coaches think. You know, I hear this a lot from... I hear this at times from our high school coaches where coaches don't want to develop anymore. They're going to go to the portal first to get that ready-made kid and you know, there's no place for a high school kid to develop. And I just debunk all of that because even the greatest... I used to say a 10-flat 100-meter kid but I'm like, God, we got like four of those now

1:30:23in high school. It's crazy. But you know, but even a kid who runs 10-flat in high school that signs with whatever quote-unquote big name school you think this has to develop. 10-flat many years don't even get you in the 100-meter finals. They've got to be able to run 9-95, 9-90 and that's development. Just because it wasn't half a second doesn't mean it's not development, it's still development. So I still believe... I know mouse develops, I know Curtis develops, I mean, flow, they develop. So I take that off the table. What are you looking for in records to recruiting? How do you handle... There's a thousand questions at one and then I'm going to let you just roll. How do you handle... I get a lot of complaints. I hear a lot of complaints about college coaches. Don't reply to emails from coaches and athletes. By the way, I get the reverse. I'll have my college coaches say, dude, I reached out and they don't reply back. It seems like no one's emailing anybody and I know that's not true, but there's a truth in the middle here. So give me some, just talk about recruiting, how you kind of handle it and what you value there and how you move forward with this, you know, it's crazy world right now.

1:31:26Yeah, recruiting, I want to get a feel that you love tracking field. You know what I mean? Mike, you and I love tracking field and that's why you've seen the gym hardball. He said, I want to hang out with people who like football because I talk about football and I want to talk about football with them. If they don't like football, they probably won't like me because I like football. You know what I mean? I want to hang around with people that like track. OK, I'm glad you started with that. I'm sorry to interrupt you because I heard, you know, I'll not say names to protect the innocent here. A college coach once at a clinic, so this is a front of people, was said the same thing. I need to know you are in tracking field. Even so much that I'll go look at your socials and if it's not all track and field, I probably won't recruit you. Now I think, this is my opinion, that's ludicrous because you're talking about 17, 18 year old kids. You're going to punish them because they have beach photos when they want them vacation and they don't have every gram is about that's crazy to me. What you're thought and you may say, yeah, no Mike, every picture better be freaking track

1:32:28and field. What you when you say, I need to know that you love track and field. How does that get expressed that you're like, OK, check that box. They love track and field. I mean, your social media is your chance to put to the public what you're what you're interested in. You know, and if I don't see any track and field, then I'm going to assume it's going to be a little bit about, you know, really, you like track because you know what you're making me keep going, I'm looking at my own Instagram because I just want to see some, you know what I mean? I just want to see some interest in track and you follow some track accounts or you follow me or you follow the team or, you know, I'm not going to hold it against you, but I'm just going to say that I do like to see some track presence. Now, kids that are starting their multiple social media is like, I can't keep track with all those, you know, you got your high school account and then you're, you know, your track account. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it wouldn't, I mean, when I bring kids in, I say like, I think kids who love track are probably going to get better at track because they're going to want to be there, you

1:33:29know, and I'd say like, if you love violin, you're probably going to get better at violin because you love it, you know what I mean? And I want, and I get the kids that benefit out like if you're late for practice, I'm not going to punish you. You're not punished in my program for being late because I assume you want to be here, right? And so my assumption, my trust in you is that you're trying to get here. You weren't. And then with my own personal history. So some people say you have to earn trust. I'm here and you say, hey, man, if you're, if I recruited your team, you've got trust, I trust that you wanted to be here. Now you can break that trust. We can always go down, but you're not a, hey, you're first year, you better not be late at all because you got to earn my trust. You're a trust given. That's the, I operate that way. So I'm with you on that. I love that. But that's the kind of coach I want my kid to go to by the way. I don't want my kid to go to a coach that says, you know, you're already behind the eight ball, you've got to prove it's like, well, bro, man, we chose you. Like what else do you want here? Bro, we had choices. And I chose you. Can't we at least start here? Let's say page. Yeah. It has some significance to me that I want you to, if you're on the phone with your mom, don't get off the phone.

1:34:30Finish the phone call. If you're about to go eat lunch, finish your lunch. Don't rush out of lunch and come to the track because you're afraid you're going to be late. I say, pet your dog, say goodbye to your mom, finish your lunch and then come to the track. Or the same thing goes for office hours. You know, okay, hold on. John, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I love this. I love that. Like literally, John, I'm like, oh, this, I'm with you. I'm wearing the same page. But you can't make that leak to their social media. Like, hey, man, if you love your dog, put a post of your dog up. That's all good. If you had to put a post of your dog in bed, in my way, if you go track, if you do grade a track, maybe you take a picture with your teammate and you put that, that'd be cool too. Something. Okay. This, this coach was like more extreme. It was like, dude, maybe I'll, uh, mocha if there's one picture of your dog, 99 others better be track. And I'm like, no, for me, it's as much about just verifying that you're the kid. I think you are. Yeah. You want to meet? I can't tell that you're the 14 second heart alert because you know. I'm zero.

1:35:31Right. Yeah. Okay. I'm with that. I felt like well-roundedness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I feel like sometimes I'm defending athletes. And I'm like, oh, you know, my athletes actually aren't my jam. Coaches are. Because okay, think about this. Ooh. Okay. So you just got me. Think about something. What if I was talking to a recruit? And they said, hey, so, so I asked them, like, how's the recruiting process going? What are you looking for? You know, got a lot of choices. You got a lot of, and they said, hey, so when I go on to a coach's Instagram, it better be all tries your job for crying out loud. What do you mean? Your wife's birthday. You have a picture of the restaurant you went to. I just had that. That's why I thought about that. But, you know, like, you would be like, bro, I'm an adult. That has like, it's my job, but it's not my life. I got a family. And what do you mean? You're going to punish me because I don't have all try. To me, it's the same. It's like, bro, he's 16. Remember, they're 16 years old, 17 years old. They're stinking kids. I hope they have Lego picture and picture of the graduation and whatever things like that. So, you seem to be a little bit in the middle and I'm cool with that.

1:36:32But I don't know that I would go like, oh, they don't have any track on there. Hmm. A little bit of a red flag. I don't think I would. I also sit and see where I'm not actually doing this recruiting job. So it's very easy for me to say this. If I was actually in your chair, I'd be like, well, my life depends on what these 18, 18 year old kids do. We're trying to predict what they care about. Right. Yeah, predict. We're forced with a decision. What are you going to choose? And I know that track isn't fun all the time. Right. It's my job to make it a little bit more fun, but also recognize that every day is not fun. So I've got to do things that keep, you know, when motivation runs out, you've got to move to your discipline. But hopefully we keep big, big motivation. Yeah. I think the key word there and I haven't heard this word in this type of discussion is predicts. And that means, like, I don't know what the actual definition is, but I'm pretty sure somewhere in that definition, it means that it means you're right 100% of time. You're predicting. You're going to be wrong. Yeah, that makes it. So just like you might be wrong. Like, oh, yeah, I think this kids all in. They're going to do really well. You might be wrong in that. The reverse.

1:37:32You might go, me this kid doesn't like track at all. I'm not going to recruit them too heavily. And they go somewhere and they're mega star. You're like, well, okay, that's wrong. Yeah, predict is a strong word there. Miss attribute the quote, but I remember somebody saying the talent is a very poor predictor of success. We talked about development. Kids are happy when they're developing. And so if you want to develop a program, I look for kids that I know are going to get better. I would pass on a fast kid versus a kid that's going to improve for four years. Because if my whole camp is getting faster and better, they're all positive. You know, okay, we're running a time about it. Now you got you made me want to ask another recruiting question. So here's another fun one that I love. You know, part of my job is to challenge coaches as well, John. You know, it's not I'm just not here to pet you on the head and say you're doing an amazing job. I got a challenge because I want to move the profession forward. And I love them and women who choose this profession. Okay, I hear a lot. I haven't heard this lately, actually. Now they think about this, but you know, for a while, it was very cool and social media for coaches, not necessarily track and feel, but I think some track coaches participate in this. Usually you hear it from the football and basketball guys and gals where they'll say,

1:38:36you know, your character matters. I don't think that's wrong. So if you, you know, if you're in trouble or I see you post a picture on your Instagram of you drinking or smoking or something like that, or I hear you cussing, I've heard this one. They're a very specific example, you know, football coach saying, oh, they cussed on their official visit. And so we yank their offer. And I'm just like, that's crazy. There's, again, there's 17 18 year old kids. But also I have yet to hear of a kid that's good. I'm talking about good to great. Like, I'm not talking about mediocre now. I'm talking about, and I'm not talking about superstars either. I'm talking, you know, 14.5 in the hurdles for guys. You know, that's not superstar, but you know, I'm solid, right? I've yet to hear of a kid that was good to great. Didn't do not get an offer somewhere. Remember Alan Iverson, like cracked a chair over someone's back at a bowling alley. I think I'm sure I got like a lot of details mixed up there. And Georgetown was like, that sucks, but here's your scholar. Like you good, man. Let's get on here and hoop, right? I've yet to hear of that 10, 30, 100 meter kid that has a bad attitude and maybe, you

1:39:42know, smarts off to his mom. So not good things. Sitting at home because everybody was like, well, that's not the character I want on my team. That's quick. Come on, man. How much do you take into account these kind of things? I think every coach has a certain level of risk tolerance, you know, and you don't, you don't fill your whole recruiting class with kids that are, you know, character risks. No, that you do. And I live in testament that's junior college, sir. Oh, yeah. I mean, for the proud alum of junior college, sometimes you just do it every other. That's all you. Yeah, yeah. We are the second, third, fourth, fifth chances. That's funny. Last chance to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I mean, if you feel like your culture is really strong, then you feel like, because I think I remember hearing that the key to toxicity is dilution, you know, so it's again, the key to toxicity is dilution, right? Nothing's poisonous if it's diluted, right? One drop of cyanide in a cup of water will kill you with one drop of cyanide in the ocean, you know what I mean? So the key to like removing toxicity is dilution.

1:40:43Okay. Okay. Or you say dilution. Yeah. See, I'm not that smart. That was a smart statement. I had to think about that. Okay. So like one bad kid, bad kid, air quotes in 100 great characters, like, okay, like you have more of a chance to affect that kid positively than that kid can affect the other 99 negatively. You would hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Third to get it. The third that don't, the key is the third in the middle. Yeah. No, that's really, I know that one actually. We have had conversations with other topics like that. Yeah. And that's what we're going to do. I think it's a good question. So, I think, I think we're going to have a conversation with some of those other students. John, dude, we could go two more hours. This is fascinating. First of all, your openness and authenticity to have some of these tougher conversations, just grateful. I think that's the kind of conversations that helps move our profession forward. And that is literally what I'm, I like to do is how do we move the profession forward? That means we're going to have disagreements. That means we're going to have misunderstandings between club coaches, high school coaches, college coaches, et cetera. I think if we can continue to have our base being, hey, we like to help kids improve

1:41:47not just on the track. I think we had a lot of great topics about off the track as well. That will help us to see some common ground. It means we, it doesn't mean we have to agree on everything, but we can see some common ground there. And so just really grateful for you, man, that this is all fun. Your journey, fascinating. I mean, you've been around the country, dude. I don't think I knew that. I knew the Houston part. And I think that's where I just got stuck there. But it's been a lot of fun just to hear your journey, man. And what's cool is, dude, you're, you're an infant in your career. Meaning like you ain't nowhere near the finish line, brother. You got a long career going on. And I'm kind of excited to be on the sidelines and watch it come to fruition. It's fun, man. It's always a pleasure seeing you at every national meet, too. So with the people and what make the difference, man, I get fun. I was talking with the coach, like I don't feel comfortable at every restaurant. I go to or every environment, but I feel comfortable to track me. I know that's my people and that's my place. I know the rules. I know the etiquette. And I genuinely look forward to going to USA's and new 20's and seeing like not only just good people, but good friends.

1:42:47You know, you're so many good people in this industry. You're one of a mic. Appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I love the my favorite. Yeah, I like track meets, but you know, it's hot. So I'm not huge. I'm a big wimp. I love the coaches convention. Everybody's together. We're not at a meet. We're not stressed about that. And it's kind of the who raw before season starts. So that's kind of my, my super boy. I love that a lot. John, dude, there's a lot of valuable things you can give me. The most valuable is your time, my friend. I'm so grateful for spending this time with her. This is a lot of fun. We got to really kind of, I kind of like when it's a little bit of a rollercoaster. And we're like, oh, yeah, we're talking about rice, but let's talk about character. And let's talk about coaching education. And you know, you get me on coach in education, bro. I can talk forever. And I love a lot of the people. I'd really love like this vision of like these people that I poured into you from a Troy Engle, Mike Smith, your high school coach, Cabe Chad. I mean, just Seth, you know, you've had Jim. Oh gosh, you've had some really top-notch people. And I think that shows and not only in your career and what you're doing there at Central

1:43:50Washington, but also in your family as well, my friend. So really grateful for your time and just so thankful for you. Mike, appreciate you, man. We'll see you again real soon. I'm sure. Absolutely, guys and guys, thank you so much for being here, man. Really appreciate you. Join us next week. We'll do it all over again. Damn.