Masters in Coaching Podcast- Episode LXI

Tim Cates catches up with Brian Barnes at the 2023 MCAA Coaches Conference at Concordia University Irvine. A repeat appearance on the podcast for Brian, who has been a long time educator and AD at West Covina HS, but is now making the move to Downey HS as a teacher and baseball coach. Brian is an alumni of the Masters in Coaching Program and is excited to be back on campus sharing his expertise and hear all the great speakers at the Coaches Conference.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Longtime educator athletic director has now madethe move to Downey High School as math
teacher and baseball coach. It's BrianBarnes, and we talked to him live
from the Concordia University, Irvines Mastersin Coaching and Athletics Administration Programs Coaches Conference.
Episode sixty one of the Masters inCoaching Podcast starts now. Welcome into

(00:26):
episode sixty one of the Masters inCoaching Podcast. Thank you for listening on
iHeart Radio app or wherever you downloadand listen to your podcast. We appreciate
it. Also for watching our YouTubeand all the outlets that you're able to
watch this song. We're so excited. We've got sixty episodes already done and
now we're at episode sixty one andwe're bringing back an old friend, Brian

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Barnes, former athletic director at WestkovinaHigh School. He has now moved to
Downey High School and he joins ushere at Concordia University, Irvine. We
are live in person here for theCoaches Conference. Brian, how you doing,
I'm doing really good. Thanks forhaving met. So let's start at
the Coach's conference. Here. Weare a couple of days of gathering for
former students of the program, currentstudents of the program, people from outside

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the program that come in and lendtheir expertise. You've been here a couple
of times. How great has thislast couple of days been. Oh,
it's been fantastic. I really enjoybeing able to come to this conference and
obviously learn from some some big timecoaches, see what they're doing, see
what they're having success with. Butone of the big pieces that I value
about coming to this as much asI can is being able to interact with

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the other students and the other coachesthat are actually in the class or the
conference and learning to see what they'redoing. You're not just sitting in a
room getting lectured to by one coach. You need to learn from ten or
eleven of them in a classroom orin a field setting. I just walked
back up from the baseball field tocome for this, and it's really cool
to be able to see what everybodyelse is doing and to be able to

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add a little bit a little bitmore tool tools in my toolbox for you.
It's a summer of change. Youspend seventeen years Westcovina High School coaching
teaching athletic director and here you're nowmoving on to Downey High School. What's
that been like? It's it's definitelya little nerve racking, little anxious.
I've been at West Been High Schoolfor my whole teaching career, and so

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to make a change is going tobe nervous, a little little anxious.
I'm going to be doing something alittle bit different in the fall, and
uh, and that takes a littlebit getting used to. But I'm really
excited to get on board of DowneyHigh School. Uh. They have a
lot of tradition athletically, they havea lot of stability with their administrative team,
with their athletics department, and it'ssomething that I'm really looking forward to

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getting involved with, teaching math inthe classroom, getting elm in the baseball
field and getting dirty a little bitand being able to help out. However,
I can you take your athletic director'shat off for the time being and
back to teaching and coaching. AndI guess you said, I know you're
excited to do that in a differentsetting. Yeah, And I think that
that's Uh, that's one big thingthat I mean, the former athletic directors

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out there that have gone back tocoaching, You're never gonna lose that mindset
of there's certain things that we haveto do, there's certain things that we
can't do on the field or onthe court. And so I think that
that's something that definitely benefits me goingback into an active coaching coaching role is
there's going to be a little bitless liability issues to worry about with me

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as a coach, right And Ithink that that's a big, a big
thing to take to prospective or interestedpeople in the Master's program is even if
you're an assistant coach or a headcoach who's aspiring to maybe be an athletic
director someday, preparing for that early, even if you never get to that

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position, it's going to be somethingthat's going to benefit you because I like
to come to I like to cometo these sports specific classes because I get
to see through the lens of beinga head coach even though I'm not a
head coach, even though I'm butit's going to help me help out the
head coach a little bit better.Seventeen years of West Kobina High School athletic
director for a majority of that whatwhat what you leave as a D or

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some of the things you kind oflook back at now as you're time as
a D that you implemented, andmaybe programs or coaches or philosophies or a
culture that you tried to instill duringthat time you look back at and you're
kind of proud about. I'm reallyproud about the relationships that I had with
the coaches on campus. I thinkthat's really key. High school athletics is

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all about building relationships with students,and I took my job as athletic director
in a similar rule. But withthe coaches, I really tried to focus
on the administrative work so that theycould focus on the students and the coaching.
And I got better throughout the yearsof being organized with them making trying
to make their jobs easier. Asan athletic director, I think it's really

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important for us to look at thefact that we're coaching the coaches. We're
the ones that are trying to helpthem be better at their jobs so that
they can benefit the students that they'reworking with. And I did that through
Really I was really stern with allmy coaches, and any of them would
tell you that for sure that anytimecoach Barnes wanted you to do something,

(05:02):
you better do it that way orwho's going to let you know? But
it was never punitive. Yeah,it was always about growing a person.
And that's something that I think thatI got from the program when I started
was I wanted to I wanted tohelp people. I wanted to serve them
so that they could grow and belifelong learners because that's something that I want

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to do. I want to keepgetting better because I'm not perfect and we
can all grow a little bit.And instead of holding it against him,
your philosophy as an AD when youwere hiring coaches for when you first started
to when you left me personally whenI first took over. I mean,
if I were an a D I'dbe like, Okay, I'm gonna find
experience coaches. Coaches are gonna comein here. We're gonna try to be
successful early on. I don't havetime to wait for a young coach and

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to let him mature. Maybe betowards a later part of my career as
an AD, maybe the philosophy changesa little bit. We're okay, I
want to bring a young guy in, mold him and kind of you know,
pour into what I believe in myphilosophy is as a school into him
and his individual sport. Am Iwrong? Is that similar philosophy? Yeah?
I think. I think definitely earlyon you you feel a little bit

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of pressure to bring some people inthere are going to have some immediate success
so that you can kind of padyour own resume. But but I think
that along the line is really whatit comes down to is if you have
a good, experienced head coach thatis interested in coming to your school,
you take advantage of that. Imean, if they've have a proven track
record and you feel like they're goingto be a good fit personality wise for

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for your athletic department and your studentsand your culture on campus, I think
that's a you take advantage of that. Sure, there's a lot of times
in our world that it makes sensefor us to start having those conversations with
people that were interested in hiring torecruit them to apply for jobs. That's
that's something that is definitely beneficial forthe networking piece part of part of our
jobs being able to get those peoplein. But at the same time,

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having an experienced coach that doesn't fitthe culture or doesn't fit the personality of
your athletic department. Versus is ayounger coach who maybe is an alumni of
the school that knows what the expectationsare already. They might not know how
to run a program, but asan athletic director, we can provide that
coach with a little bit more supportas needed. As far as the coaches
you were hiring is was it hardto find what you were looking for?

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I mean, you have expectations ofwhat you're looking to, you know,
finding a volleyball coach, soccer coach, football coach. Is are they hard
to find out there? Those reallygood quality coaches. It's getting harder and
harder to find quality coaches at thehigh school level now. Coaches can make
so much more money coaching the clubor the travel ball teams now, and

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so it's hard for us to competewith that because we're really stuck with this
is what contractually we're able to offerthem, which is pennies on the hour,
I mean the amount of time thatour coaches spend coaching year round sports.
Most of them are only getting onestipeend for a three month season,
and so it's hard to compete withthat. Now, but they're still out
there. There's still really good qualitypeople that want to influence youth through sport,

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and I think that's what really whatyou have to look for is is
finding those people that care about supportingthe student athletes. You take off the
ad hat and you put the coachinghat back on. You're coming in an
assistant coach at Downie High School withthe baseball program. Are you excited?
Is this something like you've been kindof ready to get back in and jump
into coaching and maybe instill some thingsyou've learned as an AD the last couple

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of years. Yeah, So sixteenout of this are actually fifteen out of
the seventeen years that I was atWestcomina, I was coaching either football or
baseball, and eight out of thenine years as an athletic director one of
those two sports I was coaching.I took a hiatus from baseball when my
oldest daughter was born and decided thatthat was something I wanted to get into

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about five years ago back into andonce I got back out to the baseball
field, it was I remembered whyI wanted to do it to begin with,
and I had a different viewpoint onit. Especially after finish in the
program. I wanted to. Ireally wanted to have a good relationship with
the students. I wanted to helpthem become good, better men and groom

(09:09):
them that way and use baseball asan avenue to do that, and I
thought that it gave me a goodopportunity to do so. So this past
year was the first year as anathletic director full release. Wescamine Unified took
the eighties out of the classroom aboutfive years ago, and so I haven't
taught a class in a while,and then this year was the first year

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since two thousand and seven that Ihadn't coached a sport either, and so
to not have that student interaction itwas tough for me. It was nice
to be able to go in andfocus on the work because athletic director takes
a lot of time and there's alot of work that goes into it,
but it was definitely something I wasmissing, and so in that aspect,
I'm super excited and indused about gettingback in the classroom working with students on

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a daily basis, and then beingable to do that on a baseball field
too, is something I'm really lookingforward to. Brian Aren't is our guest
here on episode sixty one of theMasters in Coaching podcast Downey High School,
longtime athletic director at West Covina HighSchool. What got you into education?
What got you into when you graduatedfrom kat Paulipamana like, I'm gonna get
into teaching, I'm gonna get intocoaching. I had a really great experience

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in high school with my high schoolfootball coach, Pat McCarthy. He was
at Arlington for a long time.I went to Riverside King for a long
time coaching football there. He dida fantastic job of not only teaching us
how to play football, but educatingus about why we were, why we
were doing certain things, how todo things correctly, how to be good

(10:37):
men. It was always a conversationthat we talked about. I was a
Coach's Award winner my senior year,so that was something that I always took
pride in the fact that the coachesreally valued me as part of their team,
and there was something they felt likeI was helping the team and I
wasn't detracting or taking away from theteam, for sure, but being able
to go through that experience it wasdefinitely something that I took to heart.

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I've talked to coach McCarthy in thelast few years and being able to touch
base with him, and I reallyvalue that that influence that he had on
my life. And combine that withhaving some good math teachers over the years.
When I when I got to calPoly, it was something that I
knew I wanted to I wanted togive back. I wanted to get back
into teaching. I love math.I've always loved math. My friends make

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fun of me because I can geekout a little bit on a little bit
too much sometimes, But but Iwanted to be able to give back.
And so being able to get inthe classroom with some students and then being
able to coach them in football andand or baseball is a great advernage to
be able to do that. Isthat something that's lost now is that relationship

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with coaches, employers because of time, because of to you know, get
in and off a campus. Alot of kids are commuting nowadays. You
don't have that you know, neighborhoodcommunity field to a lot of high schools
anymore. And it's certainly high schoolsports. Uh. You talked about your
your coach and same with me.You know, they had a huge impact
on who you are, who youbecoming, your your you know, what

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you do in life. I kindof feel we're getting it got away from
that a little bit. In highschool sports. Yeah, it's definitely become
a little bit less prevalent, andespecially in California. I'm definitely envious of
the stories that I hear about thehundreds of thousands of people that are going
to high school football games in Texas. There's there's some coaches that I connect

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with on social media that, uh, small towns in Oregon or Washington,
things like that, you still havethat small town feel out there and some
of that some of that community piecestill exists. I was really I was
really proud of our our football staffat Westcamina. We we did a really
good job of I think, buildingbuilding men we want. We want quite

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a few football games along away.Coach mcjory is a great coach, and
but he always focused on relationships withthe student and I think that the popular
the popular misconception is that that's startingto disappear. It still exists. I
think that it's a little bit easierfor us to focus on the negative side
of that, But I was Iwas really proud to get invited to a

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wedding last year a former player.Yea. I Unfortunately I had to miss
a baby shower for him this summer. We just one of one of our
former baseball players just finished his firstyear teaching math at West Kavina. He
was someone that I coached and taughtin my ap stats class when he was
a senior in high school. Hiswife was also in that class. They

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have a kid together. I mean, it's those types of relationships. Being
able to have them come back andbe a part of what's going on is
really why we do it. Itstill exists and we try to focus on
that, and it can't get drownedout by a little by some of the
negatives. Though it does get drownedout because you know, we were talking
about it earlier that the fact thatyou know, nobody wants to lose anymore

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in sports, and losing builds characterfor whatever you're doing it sports or you
know, competition outside do whenever youknow, you lose, it builds character.
And and nowadays you lose and it'slike, well, where's my first
ticket out of here? Where elsecan I go? Where I'm not gonna
lose or I don't want to bea part of this anymore. You know,
I don't want to build the culturebark, I don't have time.
I'm going somewhere else. And it'sunfortunate because that's you know, in the

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sports world, it's happening too often. It's now it's trickled down to the
high school level where a kid wantsto bail because of one bad year.
It's not doesn't build character. Hedoesn't look, you know, self,
valuate and say how can I getbetter? How can we get better?
I can be a better leader.It's I'm not out of here. Yeah,
for every The only thing I wouldsay is that I would say,
for sure, yes, there's alot more of that going on. And
the only the only caveat is thegood coaches are going to focus on for

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everyone that is leaving. You've gotnineteen to twenty nine to ninety nine on
a football team, football program,the ones that they're still staying and they
still believe in what that coaches goingon, and one bad season is not
going to to rail that for alot of those students, sure, and
so you try to focus on thatand stick with that. We do need
to combat some of that that fearof failure, and I think in society

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in general right now, it's definitelysomething we do, we do need to
fight with, but some of thatgood stuff still happening. Yeah, you
graduated from this program at Concordia backin twenty nineteen, and I look at
everything in the world now its preCOVID or pre you know, post COVID.
But you went through the program andyou loved it. I mean,
you're back here today for the Coach'sConference and going to, as you mentioned,

(15:31):
a different different seminars just to kindof pop in and see what they're
all about. As an alum,Well, what did this program mean to
you when when you found it?Was it something you knew about? And
then when you graduate in it,now is this something you're like, Oh
my gosh, I'm so much betterfor it. So I had a I
think what's probably going to become apretty common story. I had a great
interaction while our our superintendent was tryingto build a coach's professional development for our

(15:56):
district, and he brought in aconsultant who used to be a district dad
at Cape Valley High School or CapeValley Unified named Tom White, and I
got to work with Tom on theWest con Unified Coaches Academy and kind of
build that from from the ground up. And through that process, I realized
how much money I'd been leaving onthe table for not having my master's degree

(16:18):
and decided that if I was goingto get a master's, I might as
well do it and something that Ihad a passion for it. I had
already started as an athletic director,and I saw this as something that I
could really boost my ability to domy job. Yeah. So I started
the program a little bit after Imet Tom, and one of the biggest
things that I loved about the programwas I felt like every single class that

(16:38):
I took, every book that Iread, every project that I was working
on was something I could take thenext day to my job and apply it
right away. Yeah. One ofthe one of the classes that I or
one of the projects that I didfor a class was a student or a
parent athletics handbook for our district,and that was something we didn't have before,
and I got to create it fromatch and I worked with our district

(17:00):
office to make sure things were thatthey liked the information that was in there
that they were approving of everything.But I was able to get information into
the hands of our parents that hadn'texisted before, and that was something that
I did as part of this program, And if I had not done this
program, it's probably not something thatwe would have now. Besides that,

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I definitely value the networking piece.Being able to meet, be able to
take a baseball class from the headcoach at Concordia this week is huge for
me because in normal avenues I wouldn'thave a chance to meet him or interact
with the different coaches that we're workingwith this week, and so I see
that as a big positive. I'mglad you bring that up, because I

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think that kind of gets lost isthe networking while you're in the program and
afterwards that Concordia doesn't a great jobof trying to plug you in if you
want to, if you want theresources to talk to other people, same
sport, same profession, you know, same level for that matter, or
if you're looking to make that jumpto the next level, they'll get you
in touch with some buddy that canmaybe help you you figure out and navigate

(18:02):
that process. Yeah, I thinkwhen when I when I first started coaching
you and at the high school level, you're really intimidated by these college coaches.
I mean it's just like, oh, they're a college coach. Like
everyone's in awe. And I think, I think what I've one big takeaway
that I've taken is that college coacheswant to help high school coaches get better,
just like high school coaches want tohelp youth coaches. They want to

(18:25):
help inform parents on how to dodifferent things. Everyone wants and there's so
many people out there that want tohelp, but you don't have necessarily have
the resources to ask. And thisprogram has allowed me to be able to
connect with people and just ask forhelp. And when you get to sit
down with these different people that arecollege hedge head coaches and they just they'll
they'll sit and talk shop with youfor hours just because they want they like

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it, they want to do it. At some point somebody did that for
them and they like to pay itforward. And that's a big piece of
the national program here. I'd askyou what's next, you know, but
you're starting a new chapter after sevenyears at West Covina and as athletic director
and now back to teaching and coaching. Is this something that you see yourself
five years from now still still doingit Downey High School are even looking far

(19:11):
down that road right now. It'sdefinitely something that I could see myself doing
at the stabilities at that district issomething I find enviable, something that I
think is going to be really goodand positive. So I could see myself
there long term. They that's theyhave lots of people there that are going
to retire there. That's kind oftheir moo and it's something that I'm definitely

(19:32):
looking forward to being a part of. I'm not closing the door on being
an athletic director. It's I've doneit pretty well for the last few years
and been able to have some successand and expand on that, and so
I'm still I'm still going to bereally really closely involved with the Foothill Citrus
Athletic Director Association. They're they're gonnalet me stay on as a board member

(19:53):
as the past president. Uh.I just finished up a two year term
with that, and so I'm stillhave that community to to be able to
lean on and be able to helpwith keep keep my toe in a little
bit and we'll see what happens,We'll see where it takes us. If
I'm really anxious and excited to seewhere things are going at Downey, and
then we'll see where things take us. We'll best to luck to you,

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Brian in the future. You're offto a new endeavor, which is exciting.
We appreciate you coming back on thepodcast. You're one of our first
guests and here we are full circlenow episode sixty one. Certainly appreciate the
time. Thank you for having me. All right there, he goes Brian
Barnes from Downey High School, along time athletic director at Westkovina High School.
Thank you for listening, Thank youfor watching again. Find out more

(20:36):
about Concordia University irvis Masters in Coachingand Athletics Administration program at SEUI dot edu
slash Coaching. We're here at theCoach's conference that happens every June. You
can find out more about next year'sconference and the next start date for the
Master's program SEUI dot edu slash Coaching. Until next time, Tim Kate's saying,
solo, everybody