December 27, 2024 • 58 mins
Discover the hidden intricacies of running a successful collegiate athletic program as we sit down with Kevin Loney, Assistant Athletic Director for Facilities and Events Management at Bowdoin College. From his remarkable shift from coaching football to orchestrating events for 31 sports teams, Kevin unveils the meticulous planning and teamwork required to ensure flawless sporting events. Ever wonder what it takes to keep things flowing smoothly behind the scenes, even when faced with unexpected hurdles like malfunctioning scoreboards? Kevin's insights reveal the dedication and adaptability that make these events possible. Plus, I share my own tales from the world of sports broadcasting, shedding light on the unseen efforts that ensure spectators and participants alike have unforgettable experiences.
Step into the transformative world of coaching with reflections on a journey through football and the profound impact of mentorship at Bethany College. We delve into the personal growth stories of a coach shaped by the innovative strategies of Tim Weaver and the camaraderie within the coaching community. Amusing anecdotes peppered throughout highlight the unique connections made on and off the field. Additionally, the episode takes an unexpected turn into swimming techniques, where a simple adjustment dramatically improved race performance, underscoring the powerful impact of minor changes. Whether you're interested in the management prowess behind athletic events or the finer points of sports performance, this episode offers wisdom and stories that inspire passion and perseverance.
• Kevin discusses his transition from coaching to athletic management
• Behind-the-scenes roles in ensuring game day success
• Anecdotes from his time coaching and the
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ride Home
Rants podcast.
This is, as always, your host,mike Bono.
I have a great guest for ustoday.
He's coming to us from BonleyCollege and he is I believe he
coached, or he knows JohnnyFittifowl Coney very well, so
(00:21):
we're going to get into a littlebit of that here, but Kevin
Loney joins the show.
Kevin, thank you for joiningawesome mike bono.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Good as good to see you, man.
Yeah, I got a chance to coach50 for a year and then recruit
up in that neck of the woods, soit was uh feels like a long
time ago, but, um, I feel likeI'm getting old talking about
2006 I.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I hear you preaching to the choir here.
Uh, for that.
So now you're currently theassistant athletic director for
facilities and events managementat Bowdoin College in Maine.
How long have you been in thatposition, and what does that
entail?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, so I've been at the college.
I'm in year nine, going intoten, but I was coaching football
here for about six years.
Nine going into, going into 10,um, but I was coaching football
here for about six years andthen, during during 2020, um,
the person who had this roleretired after 45 years at the
college.
Um, she decided to hang up andso they had me move out of
coaching into this role.
So, basically, what I do is, um, I'm the guy who handles all of
(01:21):
our athletic scheduling, all ofour facility upgrade, upkeep
scheduling, you know, workingwith our grounds crew, working
with our housekeepers, workingwith I do our facility rentals.
So we have a hockey rink.
We rent it out for the localhigh schools and groups.
We've got our pool is gettingused by a club, our local high
(01:48):
schools.
Our indoor track is gettingused this time of year like
crazy.
So, um, and then I work withall of our all what we have.
So we have 31 sports here,division three, school 31 sports
, and so I'm the one who's kindof making sure that their
practices, their games all of itis like handled properly.
I do all of our student workerhiring.
So we've got a basketball gamegoing right now.
So we've got about a handful ofstudents who are, you know
(02:08):
they're, they're sweeping thefloor, they're doing stats or
doing the scoreboard, all kindsof stuff.
I'm doing hiring, doing alltheir hiring, all that kind of
stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, I did.
I did a lot of that when I wasat Bethany college.
I was actually the athleticdirector for the radio station
when I was in college because Igot a sports broadcasting degree
.
Yeah, got to broadcast everyhome football, basketball,
baseball.
I did the PAC soccerchampionship game it was.
It was a lot of fun.
(02:36):
I love broadcasting but it's alot of work behind the scenes
and I don't think a lot ofpeople see that.
They just see the end result.
The show went off Great.
How did that happen?
You know, it's nice to see theman behind the scenes for sure.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You know, it's funny.
You say that Cause you know,and I was a college football
coach from 2000 till 19, 2019.
And you know, for the longesttime, you never thought about
who.
Who's putting the flag up soyou can do the Anthem.
Who's doing all these?
It's all these little bitspieces, and when one thing's out
of place, you realize, oh wow,this is a huge deal.
You know, if, if, if the linesare crooked on the field, right,
(03:13):
you know, it's like when I wasat Bethany, and I probably saw
the same way, a lot of ourstudents were doing a lot of
that work, right, and so so, if,one little if, if, you know, if
the cutie was supposed to be onlaundry and take her to the
laundry, now you've got dirtystuff.
At practice, it matters, it's ahuge you know, huge thing.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I remember that, like they were scrambling one
football game I actually had twoother people set up to announce
for the radio and director cameup to me and he was like Mike,
mike, mike, I got a seriousquestion for you.
Do you want to be the bisontoday?
I, I got a serious question foryou.
Do you want to be the bisontoday?
I was like, I was like I'msorry, he goes, he goes.
I know you got the radio thinggoing on.
(03:50):
The the normal mascot.
He is sick, he is, he cannotmake it here.
We do not have a fill in.
I was like give me, give me thehead, let's go, let's get it.
You know what I mean.
He goes, we just he goes.
We need you to amp up the crowd.
We know you have a ton ofenergy.
We figured you'd be great to doit.
I was like Beth, where, where,where could I change into this
thing?
But yeah, it's things like thatthat people don't see.
(04:13):
They just see the game go offwithout a hitch and they don't
see like, okay, now we'rescrambling to find a mascot last
minute and the players areabout to run out onto the field
and hey, hey, bono, can youthrow the bison head on real?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
quick.
Hey, the scoreboard is notworking.
I mean, it happened this yearfor one of our, our first home
game.
One of our shot, one of ourplate clocks wasn't working
properly.
Yeah, and like you know andwe're so, we're kind of
scrambling trying to figure outwhat's going on.
What's doing this.
You know we're running all overthe campus trying to find this
idea.
I'm thinking the electrician ona Saturday came in on a
(04:49):
Saturday.
Electrician's working and it'sall these little things that
work behind the scenes to makesure that, and nobody knows a
scramble right.
But they see the finishedproduct and if it doesn't work
properly, they know, and they'regoing to definitely vocal about
it.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
We had one broadcast where a mic didn't work for the
announcer.
We didn't realize it.
We got our headsets on.
We could hear ourselves talking.
Everything's going off fine.
And my producer is like textingme radio and into my head while
I'm talking about the game.
Dude, nobody can hear you.
What do you mean?
(05:22):
Nobody can hear me.
I can hear myself, fine.
He's like yeah, he goes.
There's so many people callinginto the station we can't hear
the game our son's playing.
It's his first start and theywant to listen to the game.
They're from, oh, I think thatI think he was from like montana
, so not like an easy trip towest virginia to be able to
watch their son's first start indivision three football,
(05:42):
absolutely.
And I was like, well, okay,since nobody can hear me, what
do we need?
What do I need to do?
Is it a?
Is it a connection?
Is it?
Is it with you guys?
What do we need?
Let's figure this out on thefly.
And just apologizing midwaythrough the second quarter of
the game, because that's when wegot it up and running and you
know, people were still callinginto the radio station.
(06:03):
I missed the first quarter ofmy son's first start.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And I was like it's technology.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
We want you to hear this.
We had a recap, like normallywe would get you know, 10, 15
minute break at halftime playsome music.
You know all the sponsors getthem in there and we were
sitting there recapping thefirst quarter, right, you know,
just to make sure everybody.
You know got got up to date.
But you know, I know what it'slike in west virginia this time
of year football season comingin.
(06:32):
We're in december right now.
Uh, so you're in maine.
What is that like and would yourecommend visiting maine?
What to do there?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
yeah, absolutely so, I would like.
Maine is very much a, a Midwestplace on the East coast.
Okay, we call it, we call it.
The main is a small town, man,it's a everybody knows everybody
, um, and beautiful.
So Bowdoin is located about twohours North of Boston, um, like
just to Harvard, like two hourstoward the door, but we're
(07:00):
seven miles from the ocean.
So really gorgeous part of thecountry, yeah, phenomenalal in
the summertime.
I'd say, if you have a chanceto visit here in the summertime,
do it, because it's calledVacationland and it's pretty
amazing If you like good seafood, all of it, plenty of things to
do.
Winter can get challenging, butif you're north of the
Mason-Dixon it's going to bechallenging in winter, so just
(07:27):
live with it.
You know we don't have any lakeeffect, you know, which I think
is is a great thing.
But, um, you know, we've hadour first.
We had our first snowstorm, um,uh, earlier in the week and it
was.
We had also a 60 degree day,like on wednesday, so it was
gone.
Yeah, you know.
So right now you outside youcan't even tell um, but uh, you
know it's um, you know, know,our campus it's a pretty amazing
place.
It's a really old school.
We've been around since the1700s and you know one of the
(07:52):
cool things here is academicallyone of the best schools in the
country.
So you know we're competingwith like Carnegie Mellon for
some kids every now and again.
I know you guys have yeah.
We were on a bit ago when Weavewas at Brown and when he was at
Harvard, we're recruiting thesame types of kids academically.
The kids that are walking outof here are doing great things.
(08:13):
It's a pretty great small placeto be.
I'd say if you have a chance tocome visit, come do it.
We've got one of our alumniprobably the most famous alum we
have is a guy named JoshuaChamberlain.
He's a guy basically that wonthe civil war.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So it's a little round top.
If you ever want to see themovie Gettysburg, he's played by
Jeff Daniels with the big, thebig mustache.
Yeah, Pretty cool deal, yeah.
So we've got him a statue ofhim on campus and he was a.
He was a professor here duringthe Civil War and lied to the
administration to go fightPretty cool story.
And then the other guy whocreated Netflix, Reed Hastings,
(08:50):
is an alum.
The guy who's just passed awaynow, a guy named Peter Buck.
Our athletics center is namedfor this guy named Peter Buck,
who's the guy who basicallycreated Subway Sandwiches the
business, which is pretty coolstuff.
We don't get discounts, though,on either of those.
It's what it is, but yeah, it's.
You know it's a.
It's a fun place to be.
I never thought I'd be in Mainefor almost 10 years, Right, but
(09:12):
you know, the, the, the peoplehere are awesome.
The kids are great.
You know football has beenbeing a part of the program here
, with such a long history, hasbeen awesome.
And then this, all of a lot ofother sports and just the people
, like I said, are around here.
It's been phenomenal to bearound and it's been.
It's pretty cool experienceCause.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I'm from the.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I'm from the Northeast the Northeast
originally from Connecticut, butplaces you know, as you kind of
see through my, my background,I spent a bunch of time in a
year and then went out for twoyears and I went to iowa for two
years at a small school andthen moved back to the east
coast and, um, you know, I'venever been anywhere more than
three years and to have beenhere now for for as long as I've
(09:54):
been, it's kind of amazing, um,but it's been a great place and
, like I said, really amazingpeople to be around every day
yeah, when you were at bethany.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
What years were you at bethany?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
so I was.
I was there in 2006.
So Tim Weaver's first year Iwas defensive.
Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So, yeah, I got, I got there in the fall of 2007.
I was going to say, I wassaying I don't know if you were
there when I was there or what.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, I left in February.
Yeah, I left in February and Imean I was, it was.
It was a great experience.
I know I coached a handful ofplaces before that.
I was really, but still areally young coach and in the
year that I was with that staffso Tim and Bill Garvey and all
those guys, andy Upton and allthat yeah, I learned a lot about
(10:42):
coaching.
Coaching and just just from afootball, it kind of I say all
the time the way Tim goes abouthis business as a coach kind of
completely overhauled andchanged how I did everything
from a coaching standpoint.
Next is an O standpoint, justin terms of just dealing with
players, all of it.
And I think it's it's been.
I've stuck, it's stuck with metill now and even like now that
I'm not coaching, I'm kind ofcoaching a lot of coaches Now.
(11:04):
I do a lot of like on the side,a lot of mentoring on the side,
and the things that I learnedfrom him I pass on.
You know here's how we're goingto.
You know here's how you planyour week to get everything
ready to go so that you'reprepared on a Saturday.
You know to play your game onFriday.
I play your game.
Just all these little bits andpieces, um and and um, to be
able to work on that.
You know, there with a greatgroup of kids who are really
(11:29):
hungry, you know and I'm surejohn will tell you like kind of
the experiences, like they hadnot been very successful for a
number of years before we gotthere.
Oh yeah, in our first year wewon four games, right, you know,
and won some games we probablyshouldn't have won.
And then there's some teams whoare really good and we learned
a lot.
You know w and won some gameswe probably shouldn't have won.
And then there were some teamswho were really good and we
learned a lot, right, yeah, youknow W&J and Carnegie Mellon.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
We learned a lot.
Yeah, w&j taught them a lotevery year A lot of lessons.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
But you know it's funny, the guy who's the head
coach at Grove City was afreshman quarterback at Grove
City that year.
That was our homecoming game.
We beat them Then.
They've now left E3, but ThomasMoore, the guy who's coaching
there, was their freshmanquarterback.
That's crazy.
It's crazy Again.
Really good people.
(12:19):
I say to this day I coached thelinebackers and helped work the
defense with him.
That might have still to thisday I've.
You know I've I coached thelinebackers and helped work the
defense with with him and thatmight've still to this day been
the best collection oflinebackers I've ever coached,
which is pretty impressive.
I mean it's guys who could, whoare doing some really, really
talented or big or athletic orfast and you know, for a guy who
(12:40):
was learning how to run theTampa 2 defense, those guys were
great to coach it wasphenomenal.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I just I remember Coach Weaver being there.
You know he recruited fromwithin the college too as well.
That was one thing I neverreally saw, because me and a
couple of my buddies, we werejust kind of hanging out tossing
a football around and I hadplayed football in high school,
but I was there at Bethany toswim.
(13:10):
I was a swimmer do as well andI'm, you know, we're just
sitting there seeing how far wecould throw a ball.
Just stupid 18 year old thingsto do.
And it's true, let's see how,let's see if we can blow our
shoulder out route, you know,and you know I'm just launching
them and tim comes up to me andhe goes, hey, man, you got a
cannon.
I was like, yeah, I mean, yeah,I played a little, you know, um
(13:30):
, and I didn't know who he wasat the time, uh, so I just kind
of was joking around with him.
I was like, yeah, man, I mean Igot the best quarterback stats,
uh, in brook high schoolhistory.
Like he goes, really, I waslike, yeah, playoff game this
past the past year, um, we ran awide receiver reverse pass, I
threw the ball, one completion,uh, 75 yards for a touchdown.
(13:52):
So you know I'm one for one ahundred percent completion,
percentage touchdown, theinterception ratio is off the
charts.
And you know he kind of giggled,he goes we'd love to have
somebody like you on the team.
I was just like, uh, your coacharen't you?
He was like, yeah.
I was like, yeah, I appreciatethat I'm here to swim.
I'm not screwing that up, but Iappreciate it.
(14:16):
Uh.
So yeah, like we were talkingabout there, but you coached
with weaver.
Uh, bob nizole, andy upton,bill Garvey and Mr Askew all
former guests of the show here.
Oh man, we love Mr here on theshow and he's a big fan and a
big supporter of the show oh man.
We love him.
I mean, you touched on it alittle bit about Weaver, but
those other guys there, you knowwhat was that like, coaching
(14:39):
with that collection of guys?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, it know, I think the cool part for me, you
know, because you know bobby andlike ryan lieb, you know yeah
he gets it come back and to helpcoach a little bit too.
Um, a bunch of guys who werereally passionate about the
college and they knew the placereally inside and out and so
they could really do it.
They really did a great jobrelating to the guys.
So it's great having a youngstaff of guys who could relate
(15:03):
to kids from kind of all over,you know, and who were
go-getters in the recruitingprocess too and that's, I mean,
that's how you get good, is yougot to get.
You got to have great playersand you got to have kids who
bought in and and you knoweverywhere that you know it's
kind of funny, those guys, we wegot in there, I got hired.
We got hired in Februarybasically, and you know, going
through like theseason program,winter conditioning, all the
(15:25):
kind of stuff that we were doing, you know guys had to kind of
really buy into what we weredoing and they bought in and
they brought in a guy like MattCruz.
You know who's just.
You know to this day, just oneof the best players I've been
around, you know, and it's oneof the guys just kind of running
around.
You know Brent Owens was one ofour quarterbacks.
(15:51):
You know a bunch of guys justkind of running around doing
their thing and just buying intowhat we were doing.
You know Mike Elias and allthese great players who just you
know, I think we're kind oflooking for some direction and
got it.
You know, and that was the firsttime I'd been around an offense
that was like spread running,like the zone read time I'd been
around an offense that was likespread running, like the zone
read, um, and it was no, it's nohuddle and we bought what.
So what Gar was doingoffensively, you know what gave
us a chance to be reallysuccessful?
Um, and we had a lot of answers.
(16:12):
And then, you know,schematically, we were doing
some really good things ondefense and so the X's and O's
were going to be great and justgetting the guys to buy into the
hard work and the team aspect.
And even to this day we'vetalked about here and what you
see with great programs is, yeah, they focus on their opponents,
but they really are.
It's about what they're doing,and Tim used to talk all the
(16:33):
time.
We say all the time hey, we'vegot to have this great focus
about how we do our business.
You know, if we're, if we dowhat we've got, what we've got
to do, to the best of ourability, everything else takes
care of itself.
And I think, as we talk to anyplace, any program, any company
that's successful, yeah, you'vegot to know who your opposition
is, your competition is, but thecompetition it's in the mirror
(16:53):
and you know how do you do thethings that you do to the best
of your ability, what are thethings that are your strengths,
what are your weaknesses?
How do you make them strengths?
Now, how do you take thosethings that are strong and make
them stronger?
You know, and and that's, Ithink, the process that we went
through as coaching staff withthese guys, um, just in
ourselves as coaches, and Ithink that was great to kind of
(17:14):
see how we got ourselves betteras well.
You know, and um, you know, andyou know there's some guys who
aren't coaching you more,unfortunately, but I think would
be great to stay in it if theycould have.
You know, like you know, andnow garves the, the ad, down at
brook and he's like collegecoaches now, just like like holy
cow.
I talked the other day I waslike how you pulling that one
off, it was really impressive.
(17:34):
But I think you get.
You get people who are going tobuy into a mindset and
mentality and and that's what's,that's what, uh, that's what
it's all about.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
I definitely yeah, garf, being the AD there at
Brook, I joked around with him.
It's my alma mater, Brook.
You know I went there and theywould let one of the coaches go
and my nephews are playing there.
So I definitely still follow upand see what's going on there.
And I just shot him a quicktext Just bust his chops.
Like, hey, man, if you want aformer player to come back and
(18:04):
coach hit me, hit your boy up.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I'll definitely come back and coach for you.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Gar, absolutely, you can buy into that process
because I knew how Garby ranthings.
Absolutely.
But yeah, he's doing big thingswith the coaches.
He's bringing into Brooke.
I'm hoping they can turn thatprogram around like we did when
we were there.
I around like we did when wewere there.
I mean, I dabbled a little bitinto coaching a couple summers
ago.
In swimming it's a littledifferent, but I was an
(18:31):
assistant coach for a summerswim program for a local high
school here, tri-valley, whereI'm at, and the head coach for
that team was the head coach forthe swim team for Tri-Valley.
So she's like you're acollegiate swimmer.
You've had a great resume forswimming.
You had a chance at the 2012olympic trials.
Like I want you to work with myhigh school kids.
(18:52):
I mean, this team has 96 kidson it, you know, from 8 to 18.
I want you working with thehigh school team.
And she saw me focusing on acouple different of the athletes
and of the swimmers and shecame over to me.
She's like why are you reallyhoning in on these three?
They're not even my best threeswimmers.
I said I'm not looking for yourbest three swimmers, I don't
(19:13):
need to worry about that.
They know what to do.
They're doing their thing.
I'm looking for the rightswimmers that have the right
mindset, that want to put in thework, that are willing to
listen to what I have to tellthem.
Right, and the these kids,their strokes fine, there's
nothing wrong with the stroke,maybe a little bit of mechanics,
but it's.
It's summer, you know, we'renot in swim season, and this one
(19:34):
she needs one little extrastroke at the end and she'll
drop her time by probably threetenths of a second.
And she was like, really, I waslike, watch, do this with her.
And did it.
And lo and behold, that uh girlbecame a regional champion,
that's awesome.
And swimming that year, that'sawesome, and it's.
(19:55):
She was like, wow, I neverwould have thought.
I was like, yeah, I see things,you see these kids daily, the
little things that you think youwould see.
Right, you're missing.
I'm a completely fresh,unbiased eyes and I saw these
things because I had thesethings.
When I was swimming, A coach, anassistant coach, came to me and
, lo and behold, it was mystarts.
I was a backstroker.
(20:17):
In college.
They moved me to backstrokefull-time.
I never really was abackstroker.
My starts were off.
It was costing me a half asecond to a second on my times
and my assistant coach came upto me and she she was just like
try this, just just try, I'lltry anything if it drops me a
(20:37):
couple seconds.
The next meet we were in a relay.
I would enter um the im relayand I was leading up as the
backstroker and after the raceguys were looking up like we
dropped the relay time by likethree seconds.
How did we drop our time bythree seconds?
And I looked up I went oh,there it is.
I dropped my backstroke splitby three seconds.
(20:59):
It dropped three seconds off ofmy time, which is an eternity
in swimming.
Just from a little.
Pull yourself up a little bitmore on the start.
That was her only critique.
It's amazing.
Your launch is great, yourstreamline's great.
Pull yourself up a little bitmore on that start.
(21:20):
Watch what happens.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Drop three seconds.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
It's amazing.
It's insane to me.
My first college job was atNorwich University in Vermont.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Drop three seconds.
It's amazing.
It's insane to me.
My first college job was atNorwich University in Vermont.
It's the oldest privatemilitary school in the country.
It's a school where ROTC wascreated and I remember one of my
first meetings on their campus.
Our head coach at the time, whoI had played for at another
college, at Dickinson College inPennsylvania, had said he goes
look, we've got a rifle rivalryteam here.
(21:47):
Naturally it's a militaryschool.
He says when you're rivalry,when you have a rivalry
competition, the scores look inthe thousands.
And so he goes if you win yourrivalry match 2000 to 1999, you
don't know which bullet it wasthat made the difference.
And so you never know what thelittle thing is going to be that
(22:08):
can make the difference.
But those little things add upand they and and that's where I
think, and I think right, that'sthe message, more so now as we
kind of talk through like he'stalking, like young kids and
then in in young athletes, theydon't necessarily see that
because they see the big pictureright at the end.
Well, hey, if you understandthat the little thing is going
to be the difference maker, youmay not know it, but you just
(22:31):
got, you still got to work at it.
What's you know?
It's the guy who's trying to,who's struggling foul shooting.
Maybe it's the one littleadjustment here and there and
that's what takes that coach,hey, a coach with some fresh
eyes to see that sometimes, yeah, and and hey, and, being
willing to try new things and bewilling to fail because hey, oh
yeah okay, who cares.
You know you tried it.
Unless you tried it, yeah, youknow that's been.
(22:52):
I think.
So one of the things that Ithat I deal with here at bowden
is we've got a lot of studentshere who are like those a
personality go-getter kidsthey've never had.
They've never had a b, they'venever had a c or d in school.
They get to college and theyfail and they get an F on a
paper, the first paper, andtheir world comes crashing down.
You try something and it failed.
(23:13):
Now let's try some new things,some new ideas, and take a deep
breath and realize that's justfeedback for you.
You're going to be okay Knowingthat they're in a school
because they had an F on a paperas a freshman in college.
You're going to be okay.
You know you're going to getthe jobs.
They're still going to come.
You're going to be all right.
Just a matter of okay.
Let's take a deep breath andfigure out your process and
(23:35):
what's going to be, how we getyou from there, from here to the
next spot, so that you can gobe confident doing what you're
doing and and like to your pointit's like those little things
here and there that maybethey've been doing things a
certain way for a really longtime and it's worked for them.
And now, hey, now you're indeep water and you got to figure
out, okay, what are those newthings I got to adjust, or what
I got to get better at, orthings maybe that coasted on
(23:56):
because I could and I didn'trealize I was coasting on, and
that's, I think, a great.
It's a, it's a great teachingtool for for our students for
sure, um you know, yeah, a lotof our athletes especially yeah,
I was that stubborn athlete.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I'll tell you that.
You know, even going intocollege, like coach mcgowan
wanted me to learn thebreaststroke, could never do the
breaststroke.
And I've been swimming since Iwas eight.
I still can't do thebreaststroke.
I don't know why I can't get mylegs to do what what they're
supposed to do.
Yeah, and I fought him on it.
He was like well, I might needyou for this hunter brushstroke
(24:32):
in this next meet.
I was just like we're probablygonna have to dq that one coach.
I can't do that.
I'm telling you right now Ican't do the brush.
I'm gonna either not show upand we're gonna get dq'd for not
showing up, or I'm gonna dosomething wrong and we're still
gonna get dQ'd.
I'm trying to save us a littlebit.
He was like alright, well thencome with me.
He cleared everybody out of asingle lane and goes hang on to
(24:52):
the deep end wall and you can'tleave until you do 100
breaststroke kicks.
I was like why do I?
Is it because I bucked back atyou?
Is that why you're punishing menow?
He's like no, no you why you'repunishing me now?
He's like no, no, you'll thankme later.
I don't think my legs are gonnathank you after this coach.
I'm just gonna I'm not gonnalie to you here like this is,
this is brutal, but and he stoodthere and if I did one wrong it
(25:14):
didn't count.
It was like it was like thatmilitary school that you were
just talking about, you know,and it's that little thing.
And he was like you know whatyou say.
You can't do it point your toea little bit more here when you
come up and the strokes got alittle bit better.
I did the event, did not do well, but you know, I I did the
(25:36):
event.
We didn't dq, we didn't dq andI I was.
I was already going into thatevent like yep, this is not
going to go well for us and I'mgoing to have a dq on my record
and that's not good for me, uh.
But you know, listen to coach.
You know I always, yeah, Ialways I'm not looking for the
best, I'm looking for the rightathlete.
Yeah, and that that was that'smy mentality when I would know
(25:58):
in in coaching and that.
But you left bethany, like yousaid, in 2006 season.
I believe it was for the.
Was it for the university ofnotre dame?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
yeah, can you talk about that experience a little
bit?
Yeah, it's kind of funny.
So, um, one of the guys that wehad worked with at harvard was
working at notre dame and uh,charlie weiss was looking to
hire some new young coaches, umon the staff, to kind of be like
the low totem pole people, andhe hired four people.
So I mean, we've asked me itwas do you, do you want to apply
(26:28):
for the job?
Now?
I grew up as a Notre Dame fanand okay, but you know we had
gone four and six at Bethanylike, all right, I'm my first
time being a coordinator, I'mlearning how to do this thing.
Do I really want to walk awayfrom that, to kind of start from
scratch?
And I went home over theholidays and asked a bunch of
people what I should do and Idecided I'm gonna go, I'm gonna
take a shot and go for it,interviewed, ended up getting
(26:50):
hired, um, it's kind of funnythat the guy I shared an office
with um is, uh, shane waldron,who's just the oc with the bears
.
Yeah, I'm assuming it would notsurprise me if she doesn't end
up at north carolina with coachbelichick they're together with
the patriots and then PatrickGraham, who's the coordinator
for the Raiders.
He's my roommate for two years,okay, so we get there in 2007,
(27:16):
and it was interesting because Isay the great part of it was A
Notre Dame's an amazing place.
I think if you ever get a chanceto go there or be a part of.
It was A.
Notre Dame is an amazing place.
You know, I think if you everget a chance to go there or be a
part of it, even people whohate Notre Dame you go and you
visit.
It's like, oh my God, thisplace is different.
It's a small college playingbig time college sports and
(27:39):
that's why their fans are sorabid and obnoxious and annoying
, because that's just who theyare.
But they've earned it a littlebit.
The kids are awesome to bearound.
They're just phenomenal youngpeople.
Some guys who I still talk toall the time and you know, just
they happen to be growing up onnational television every
Saturday and going through sometough times because we were
(28:00):
there in 07 when we were one ofthe worst teams in the country.
You know you just graduated.
You know Brady Quinn and JustinMargin, all these guys and you
walk in with a freshmanquarterback in Jimmy Clawson and
you know Golden Tate's afreshman, all these guys and
they learn what they learned by.
They learned by losing.
You know we were, we were threeand nine.
Their freshman year lost Navyfor the first time in 45 years
(28:21):
and just, you're going throughthat experience and you're
trying to just and they justkept coming back, which is
awesome to see because they hada ton of character the next year
, you know a bunch of guys gethurt mid season but ended up
winning a bowl game.
You hadn't won a bowl gamesince, since Lou Holtz was
coaching there.
Right, that was a big.
That was a big experience andyou know it was.
I didn't.
(28:42):
I never knew that you couldwork as hard as you had to work.
Um, I worked really hard.
You know as, as young guys onstaff, you're the ones in there
doing all the film work, doingall the.
You know you're.
You're the ones you knowstaying at the hotel on official
visits, make sure kids arestaying out of trouble.
You're you're living in thedorm over the summer when the
guys were, when the guys reportbecause, hey, they got to make
sure they.
You're in charge of that stuffand you know it was.
(29:07):
You know a lot of work.
You're in early.
You're leaving late.
You know not getting a lot ofsleep.
I'm still trying to figure outhow to sleep regulated now.
You know 20, some odd yearslater.
But you know also, again,learned a lot of football,
learned a lot of X's and O's,learned a lot of just dealing
with people and you know thoseare kids, are kids again, same
(29:28):
thing, very much go-getter kids.
They.
They struggle sometimes withthe with, you know, doing what
they have to do, like and justcutting it loose.
You know, and I think as youwatch them now I mean they've
got some guys who can do that.
I think it's been a great jobrecruiting by the last few
staffs on there and the cats hasthere.
Now they've.
But when you see kids who, thechallenge of really, really
(29:50):
smart kids sometimes is theyoveranalyze everything right and
they're just stuck there.
you know, I think about guyslike you know.
So obviously bethany has, likethe, the scholarship program, or
if you get the, get the fullride, if you let like I forget
what they call it, but daveobble, you know, got it, yeah,
in school, and you know thosetypes of kids sometimes just
(30:10):
they get paralyzed, theyoverthink you, they want to be
perfect, right, they overthinkthings, and that same thing
would happen there, um, and youknow, you get some guys who are
just like, remember, we had akid who's a really talented, you
know, high, high recruit out ofcollege and he was a scout team
player and if we didn't tellhim what to do on every single
play, he just stood there, youknow, and just cause he's just
(30:32):
analyzing analyzing everythingyou know.
And and so getting guys to trusttheir ability and to.
You know, that was kind of theprocess there, but it worked out
and you know, I was able to.
I still a lot of things that interms of just things like you
never thought about.
So here's an example Like whenwe were on the road for games,
we would meet all the time and Inever understood why we did it
(30:57):
until I became a head coach.
Yeah, and actually, honestly, Ifigured it out the year after I
left, because we were I was ata Division II school in Iowa.
We were on a road trip and infact I think we were going to
figure out who we were going togo play and guys were late to
the bus leaving the hotel.
The coach said we're leaving at9am, guys are walking on the
bus at nine o'clock and he's,he's furious, right and well,
(31:23):
and I'm sitting there going,okay.
Well, we never told them to beearly for the bus.
We told them the bus leaves atnine and and I guess and and
before that our staff had gottenthere.
That was never really a thing,that was that was kind of
explained to them and so I saidall right, so let's have a
meeting five minutes before it'stime to go.
That way you're on time for thebus.
Yeah, I'd rather have you latefor the bus, late for the
meeting, than late for the bus.
(31:44):
I'm not gonna leave a playerright.
it's like life happens you're on, you're on the road in a hotel,
bad breakfast, you get kids,you know whatever happens you
get something yeah you know atleast now, if you're late to the
meeting we can deal with it,versus hey, if you're, if you're
late to the bus, we're leavingsome kid, I'm not, we're not
doing that.
That's especially this day andage.
You can't do that so absolutelyyou know, and I'm oh, that's why
(32:05):
we did it, because I don't wantJimmy Clawson late to the game,
because we need that guy.
I mean we can talk tough abouthey, whatever, but that guy's a,
he's a dude, absolutely so itwas.
It was some great lessons fromthat standpoint and just also
just in terms of like, just thegame planning aspect of things.
You know, we were so thorough,schematically, you just got to
(32:29):
have better players thaneverybody else and that's at
that level.
You're playing against someguys that were just flat out
better, right, I mean, at thattime USC at the time was rolling
.
I mean, yeah, they were.
I mean we lost to Matt, mattSanchez twice.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
And it wasn't close.
They were better than us.
We beat Michigan.
My second year.
That was Rick Rod's first yearthere, but the year before they
smoked us they had a bunch ofthat was Ryan Mallett and Jake
Long and all those guys and it'slike you're going through.
I still have the old scoutingreports going that guy, that guy
, that guy, that guy's getting agold jacket.
(33:07):
It's like, oh great, no wonderwe got our faces ripped off.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
You know yeah I, I still even remember that in
college, you know, swimmingagainst teal, yeah, and did not
know, yeah, walking into it,that they were that good of a
swim program, right, and wethought it was weird because one
it was a distance meet and forme I was a spreader, you know,
200 yards was my max, right, andthat wasn't even pushing it,
(33:33):
yeah, and that was the shortestevent that I swam that day.
And you know, going into it,and their pool wasn't in yards
like Bethany was, it was inmeters, so it was an
Olympic-style pool.
Oh yeah, it was in meters, soit was an olympic style pool.
Oh yeah, it's like all right,there's a d3 college that has a
olympic size pool in meters, notin yards, right, and we walked
(33:54):
in.
We're used to, you know,bethany college.
The swim program was very small.
When I was there I was 104 guyson the team.
So you know, very small teamand you know we parents, a
couple parents coming, you knowa couple friends coming to watch
you girlfriends, whateverBoyfriends are there just to
watch their significant othersand everything like that.
But then we get to deal and theplace is packed.
(34:17):
There's, there's, there's aband playing, there's the
mascots there and I'm looking atmy buddy going where the hell
are we Like?
What are we in the Olympicsright now?
Are they that good?
Are they still that good?
And my buddy has been swimmingthere for a couple of years.
He was like, oh, you're in fora treat today.
(34:37):
I was just like, okay, so theseguys are just that much better
than us?
Is that?
Is that the case?
The case, and I still rememberit was.
It was the 500 uh meterbackstroke brutal event for me.
And I remember finishing therace.
I mean at the time I think itwas like 20 laps in the pool.
(34:57):
It's a long, long time.
You're used to swimming four toeight, you know.
So I remember because the rulein swimming isn't not a lot of
people know this is you know,just because you finish.
The rule in swimming isn't nota lot of people know this is you
know, just because you finishthe race.
If everyone isn't finished, youcannot leave that lane,
otherwise you were disqualified.
That means getting out of thepool.
Yes, you have to stay in thatlane.
(35:18):
And I just remember finishingand being like, oh, thank god,
I'm done.
And I looked and the guysaren't even huffing and puffing
anymore.
That's how long after they hadfinished that.
It took me to finish the racebecause I never knew how to pace
myself in distance.
My mindset as a sprinter is goas fast as you can, as hard as
you can for the entirety of therace.
(35:40):
And I look around, I'll beatred.
And these guys are like, hey,good job.
I was like you don't have tosugarcoat that man.
That sucked, you're good, goodfor you, man.
I looked at his thumbs.
I was like dude, those areawesome times, man, good for you
, but yeah it's crazy, like youtalked about, like we.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
So it's funny, in 06, Teal has just coming off
winning the conferencechampionship.
Yeah, and we played them athome.
And I remember, you know, wehad a great week of practice and
we were, as a staff, liketrying to think okay, we weren't
sure, like, how good we were,how good they were Like I mean
they were good on tape.
And then, literally in thefirst five minutes, I remember
we going, oh, you guys are muchbetter than we are.
(36:19):
Let's hang on to it and let'sjust do what we can to.
You know, make it respectable.
And, and you know we didn't I'dlike to say to the players but
you're just going to do what yougotta do, let's not, you know,
let's not beat ourselves by,cause these guys don't need any
help beating us.
So we've got to go, but that'sit's.
It's it's always.
I think it's always good tokind of, hey, get out of your
comfort zone.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
And then and learn hey, if this thing happens, Now
you have an experience for it,now you can coach a kid who's
going to go do that thing Maybehe's never done it before.
Or maybe if there's an injuryand you need a kid who's a
sprinter to go and do a distance, here's your plan, here's your
path, here's how you do it.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Learn how to pace yourself.
Again, I was one of those cockyathletes, in college too as
well.
I hate to admit it, but I was.
You know, looking back, I'm 35now I can look back at you.
At 18 I was.
I was cocky, I was notconfident.
I was cocky and the coach wasjust like, and you know, he had
me in the distance lane thatweek of practice for the teal,
for the teal mate.
I was like why does he have meover here like I'm cooking these
(37:22):
people, like they're they're,they're slower swimmers than me,
they're distance, or that's whythey're they're.
They're slower swimmers than me, their distance, or that's why
they're they're here.
And he was, and he I thought hewas joking he was like you
gotta get ready for that 500backstroke.
I was like, okay, coach, yeah,good, one 500 backstroke, all
right, good luck, good luckhaving that happen.
It's not happening, coach.
And it happened.
And yet you know it's one ofthose ones that you know it's
(37:43):
like yeah, I learned a lot thatmeet.
I don't say that I failed.
Yeah, obviously I swam theworst, worst time I've ever swam
in my life.
But I learned a lot aboutmyself and from that point, on.
I finished the race I did notquit.
There's no quit in me If I hadto just float back to the start
(38:05):
finish line, there was nostopping me.
And I learned a lot becausethat was about midway through
the season that we had that meet.
And I just remember after that,whatever coach said, you got to
coach, yep, let's do it.
All right, you got me in the200 again.
All right, let's go.
(38:25):
I got you.
I learned how to, I learned howto pace myself for that first
hundred.
You know, and it's just littlethings like we talked about
earlier, little things like thatthat make athletics fun and
make coaching fun.
You know I I even had that inthe shortened time one year that
I was an assistant coach in asummer swim program trying to
(38:49):
trying to get kids to.
You know, buy in and listen tothe, to the advice, and you know
a lot of them are like, well,I'm not a district champion.
it's like okay, now we knowwhere you want to work, let's
put the work in now you thinkit's going to happen in your
little short swim season in inhigh school and to get to
districts.
No, it starts now in the summer, when you're thinking, oh, we
(39:10):
could relax.
This is a summer swim program,it's supposed to be fun, and
blah, blah, blah.
It's like I don't know aboutyou, but winning's fun to me,
yeah, winning's fun it's aprocess.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, so it's funny you talk about that.
Like the thing that I do now isI talk to a lot of our athletes
is when we've got some guys,maybe kids, who are maybe we're
going through some crisis ofconfidence or just trying to
learn stuff.
You know I'm a big big readerand so like there are a couple
of books that I kind of push onkids.
Hey, look, you know, so are you?
Are you still his fan?
(39:40):
Yeah, so, naturally so.
Russell Wilson's is actuallyjust his best friend just passed
away from cancer a couple ofyears ago and you know he, that
guy, wrote a book called itTakes what it Takes, and and
that is a book about kind of toyour point, hey, it's going to
(40:02):
take you this long to learn thisthing.
It may take.
It may take person over there10 days, it may take you 20 days
, it's going to take, it's goingto take what it's going to take
.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
And the way that you attack that that time's going to
take is going to determine howsuccessful you are with.
And then the other, the otherguys got in.
Uh, josh, um, I got to look athis name.
I'll, I'll, I'll email you thenames of the guys.
But he wrote a book called chopwood, carry water.
(40:38):
You know, I wrote a book calledum wind in the dark, and this
is kind of to your point, andthe wind in the dark is about.
It's a, it's a parallel.
Basically it's about a kid whois gonna go do this, this like
really dangerous sporting event,and how he's got to learn to do
all these things to besuccessful when no one's
watching, yeah Right, and so ifyou want to be great at this
thing, it's when no one'swatching you do it.
(40:58):
You're not winning districtsduring districts.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
No.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
You win over the summer.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
You don't win football games.
Today is the quarterfinals ofD3, right, those games aren't
one day.
They're won in in december andin january and february and
march and april and sometimewhen you're on your own without
your coaches, that's when youwin those games and and the
level of commitment to that andthe level of of detail to those
(41:27):
things is what it will determineif you have a chance to be
successful.
Sometimes you're going againstTeal.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
It's what it is.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
To hold your own, to compete.
It doesn't happen today, ithappened months ago.
It's a huge lesson for kids tolearn, for people in general to
learn.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I had a couple of buddies in high school.
I wasn't a of buddies in inhigh school, I wasn't a four
year starter at football.
You know I I earned my spot mysenior year on special teams.
You know from the work I put infour years and I was that
habitual scout, team player andyou know it.
(42:10):
It guys didn't see.
You know I was going out withmy dad in the in the summertime
and I wasn't allowed to doanything I wanted to do till I
caught a hundred balls as areceiver.
Until you catch a hundred balls, if I throw I have to throw you
400 for you to catch a hundred.
Till you catch a hundred ballswe're not you can't do anything.
(42:33):
And you know, even in practice,you know getting beat up by the
starters just guys that are justlike looking to punish the
scout team players and poppingright back up and going back
into the, into the huddle forthe next, next play.
And you know it's it coach atthe, at the bag, what, what was
like he was probably the.
(42:53):
He goes and I mean this in thebest way possible the dumbest
and toughest person on ourfootball team.
He goes.
I've seen him get his headtaken off in practice to where
his helmet literally flew fiveyards the opposite direction.
He got up, grabbed his helmet,put it back on and went back
into the huddle.
Finished the play he broke afinger and it was literally
laying across the other twofingers.
(43:14):
He had the trainer pop it backin, tape it up and he was back
in after that and he just didn'tknow how to stop working like
they.
There was times they had toliterally like pat me.
So go, go, sit down now.
You need, you need a minute.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
So you want to work, but that's the work that I would
rather have to pull kids back,pull people back from working
too hard, than having to pushthem to work harder.
Yeah, absolutely, athletics isspecial.
We've got kids here andeverywhere.
(43:53):
I mean people who come to these, these colleges and even high
schools and and and and youthteams, whatever who bring a lot
of baggage with them.
You know, you know if it's.
You know I tell coaches all thetime hey, you know, if a kid
comes from a broken home, thekid didn't break the home.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Right, you know what I mean.
Something happened.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Something's happening , so we got to deal with it as
coaches.
We got to deal with it as asthe adults in the room and help
and help them find their theirway to get, get to where they
want to get to.
That's what coaching is aboutin general.
Right, it's about getting thatperson to be at their best when
it counts.
Yeah, and it takes to do that,and, and yeah, that's you know,
fine, you know your dad pushingyou, even if you want to do it
and the days you don't want todo it.
Those are the ones right and Iworked with a guy a couple years
(44:38):
ago here at bowden um who usedto talk about.
You know their easy days andtheir hard days.
First day of practice easy day,everybody's all geeked up,
pumped up.
First game easy it's.
It's practice 20 or 30 whereyou're the monotony of it.
You know that's, that's thepart, that's the hard day.
Can you bring the same energy,the same juice, the same focus
to those days?
(44:58):
You know, when no one'swatching, you know to be where
you, so you can get you, knowingthat, hey, the outcome is going
to get you what you want.
I give you a chance get whatyou want absolutely that's.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
That's.
Yeah, yeah, it's just.
I remember that.
I just remember them pullingyou back.
Yeah, literally, there's grasshanging out of your helmet
because you've been planted somany times.
Take a minute, yep, take abreath, grab some water, come
back.
They wouldn't let me come backin.
Sometimes it's like all right,coach, I'm good, I got a jug of
(45:39):
water, I'm good.
He's.
No, no, we're gonna letsomebody else get some work.
All right, that's just it.
I need to work, coach, thatthat's me.
It earned me a spot on our kickcoverage team.
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (45:43):
like, and that's that was huge for me as a senior.
And deep down inside yourteammates know it.
That's the best part, right?
Those, they're seeing you, they, they see the work and we see
it now too, like there's a.
There's a whole world now where, you know, I've had, we've had
people come and speak at thecollege about different things
and you know the idea of the tryhard.
Well, give me a team, try hardall day, every day, all day,
(46:04):
every day.
Yeah, we'll pull them back.
You know, give me kids who, whoare committed to being the best
version of themselves they canbe, because ultimately they they
may not get there, but they'regoing to work at it and if they
fail, they fail, so be it, I'drather fail, you know, aiming
for being the best and whateverhappens happens.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Yeah, absolutely, and we're running near the end of
the time here, so I want to getthis last question in this last
segment.
But if someone is interested inuh, bonan in university there,
uh, what, you know what's tolearn more, you know how to find
them and everything like that.
So you know, tell everyone youknow.
If there's an email or anythingthat we can put down in the
description, tell everyone wherethey can find you.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, uh, boden, um, you
know, uh, you can go on awebsite.
It's a pretty, pretty in-depthone B-O-W-D-O-I-N, dot E -D-U,
and then athletics at Bowdoin.
You can kind of look at allthat part of it.
But just as a school, about1800 students, just again a
really amazing place where we'rejust finishing early decision
(47:07):
one right now We've got we takeabout 500 kids a year, um, and
you know we're trying to getkids all over the country, all
over the world, to come here, um, it's great little, this tiny
little place in Maine, man, it's, it's, you know, kind of a ton
of majors.
You know, I think a lot of ourathletes are either going into
like the finance world, pre-law,pre-med, um, a couple, a couple
(47:28):
people going to education andthey're kind of doing pretty
amazing things when they walkout of here, which has been
great.
I would say that in this dayand age where, where the economy
is where it is, the majority ofour students are walking out of
here with the job they want,which I think is kind of a
unique situation.
Our alumni are really engaged.
We actually just had our men'sbasketball team was actually out
(47:50):
here at Ecclewood Woods lastweek.
They played out at um, atcarnegie mellon, carnegie mellon
, um in a tournament and, uh, weactually had an alumni event
while we're out there, and sowe've got a bunch of people out
there as well.
And, um, I will say that I'venever been in a place where all
the alumni are as passionateabout a place as they are and
(48:12):
they're going to.
If you're, if you're in theplay on Broadway, they're coming
to support you and act likejackasses in the stands.
They're cheering you on, whichI think is a pretty awesome
thing.
You know, and I think therethere are places where the
alumni are really tied to theplace.
I think Bethany's one of thoseplaces.
This place has been just for meand my time here, just this
(48:34):
amazing experience to see thesepeople who come from all over
the world and, to this day, arestill the closest of friends.
I mean, I'm on a text chainwith 40 alumni who get together
and have dinner every othermonth, just hanging out at a
Mexican restaurant and havingdinner, just talking about their
time here and how it's helpful,and then you know if a kid
(48:55):
wants to go, do this, that orthe other thing, they'll,
they'll, they'll get your help.
They'll get your help.
They'll talk to you about it,and then they're at the top of a
hat and that's.
And then our professors areamazing.
I mean they, they come to games.
We've got, like I said, 31sports, so a third of our
student body are athletes at oneof the top 10 ranked schools in
the country, and we've gotprofessors in the stands
watching games, grading paperswhile watching games and
(49:16):
cheering on being crazy.
It's been awesome.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
So that's awesome.
It's a pretty amazing, prettyunique place.
Um, and I've thought, I neverthought I'd be, like I said, be
at a place this long uh,especially in Maine, of all
places, but it's, it's beenawesome to be a part of it.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
That's awesome.
So, yeah, everybody, I will putthe link there in the
description of this episode hereto listen to.
But, kevin, I do have to getthis segment in.
It is the last and finalsegment here and I don't let
anybody know about this becauseit is the fast 55,.
Five random questions from thewonderful manager of the podcast
(49:49):
, johnny.
He sent these to me today, umso, cause he had, I know we had
a rescheduling, uh conflict lasttime we were supposed to record
here, so he sent me a whole newset of questions Cause he wants
it to be a surprise for both ofus.
These are kind of rapid fire,but you can elaborate if you
need to.
All right, all right.
So question number one all youcan eat crab legs, yay or nay?
(50:11):
Yay, I mean, come on, that's a,that's a toss-up for the first
question.
Come on now, let's here we go,here we go.
This.
This is a hundred percent afitting question.
If 20 horses fought fivegiraffes, who wins?
Speaker 2 (50:28):
giraffes okay, yeah I can see that it's range it's.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
It's normally good.
Yeah, you got to get that range.
Yep, that's where I wasthinking.
All right, question numberthree the best flavor of
popsicle is oh uh grape grape,yeah.
Grape or orange for me, it'sgrape or orange for me.
It's great for orange for me,all right.
Canoeing, overrated orunderrated canoeing, canoeing uh
(50:55):
underrated great exercise.
I actually taught it um for twoyears at uh upper iowa
university oh, I knew he wasgoing to add this question in
here and you're going to knowwhy as soon as I read it.
Are nhlL players more athleticthan Olympic swimmers?
(51:15):
Yeah, some of them are, not all, some of them are.
As somebody that was an Olympichopeful in swimming, I knew
he's been waiting four yearsWe've been doing this show to
get that dig in.
But you know what, I'm a hugeNHL fan too as well in.
But you know what, I'm a hugenhl fan too as well.
So you know those guys arefreak athletes.
(51:36):
I'll give you that.
But yeah, that was the fast 85and he gave you a couple
toss-ups in there, but then wegot back to a little bit more of
the, the finer questions of ofjohnny's mind and how it works.
That is phenomenal.
Kevin, I give every guest thisopportunity at the end of every
show.
If there's anything you want toget out there, anything else
you want to promote, whetherit's for the college, anything
(51:57):
like that, or even if it's justa good message, I'm going to
give you about a minute.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Man on the floor is yours my message honestly is
this is we live in a world wherepeople who are now being like
just generally nice people seemsto be a negative thing.
It costs nothing to be a niceperson, say please and thank you
and all that stuff.
Just treat folks with dignityand respect.
It's not that hard.
(52:20):
It's not that hard.
It makes everything else go alot faster, a lot easier.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Yeah, I love it when people end it on a good message
like that.
I really do.
I mean, I'm all for helpingpeople promote anything that
they got going on for themselves, but when it's a good message
like that, I absolutely love it.
But that is actually going todo it for this week's episode of
the ride home rants podcast.
I want to thank my guests again.
Kevin Loney for joining theshow here.
(52:46):
A lot of fun to get to talk toyou.
Talk at sports, all to talk toyou.
Talk at Sports, all Things,coaching and your journey and
everything like that.
It was an amazing one.
It's great to listen to.
As always, if you enjoyed theshow, be a friend, tell a friend
.
If you didn't tell them anyways, they might like it just
because you didn't.
That's going to do it for meand I will see y'all next week.
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ride Home
Rants podcast.
This is, as always, your host,mike Bono.
I have a great guest for ustoday.
He's coming to us from BonleyCollege and he is I believe he
coached, or he knows JohnnyFittifowl Coney very well, so
(00:21):
we're going to get into a littlebit of that here, but Kevin
Loney joins the show.
Kevin, thank you for joiningawesome mike bono.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Good as good to see you, man.
Yeah, I got a chance to coach50 for a year and then recruit
up in that neck of the woods, soit was uh feels like a long
time ago, but, um, I feel likeI'm getting old talking about
2006 I.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I hear you preaching to the choir here.
Uh, for that.
So now you're currently theassistant athletic director for
facilities and events managementat Bowdoin College in Maine.
How long have you been in thatposition, and what does that
entail?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, so I've been at the college.
I'm in year nine, going intoten, but I was coaching football
here for about six years.
Nine going into, going into 10,um, but I was coaching football
here for about six years andthen, during during 2020, um,
the person who had this roleretired after 45 years at the
college.
Um, she decided to hang up andso they had me move out of
coaching into this role.
So, basically, what I do is, um, I'm the guy who handles all of
(01:21):
our athletic scheduling, all ofour facility upgrade, upkeep
scheduling, you know, workingwith our grounds crew, working
with our housekeepers, workingwith I do our facility rentals.
So we have a hockey rink.
We rent it out for the localhigh schools and groups.
We've got our pool is gettingused by a club, our local high
(01:48):
schools.
Our indoor track is gettingused this time of year like
crazy.
So, um, and then I work withall of our all what we have.
So we have 31 sports here,division three, school 31 sports
, and so I'm the one who's kindof making sure that their
practices, their games all of itis like handled properly.
I do all of our student workerhiring.
So we've got a basketball gamegoing right now.
So we've got about a handful ofstudents who are, you know
(02:08):
they're, they're sweeping thefloor, they're doing stats or
doing the scoreboard, all kindsof stuff.
I'm doing hiring, doing alltheir hiring, all that kind of
stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, I did.
I did a lot of that when I wasat Bethany college.
I was actually the athleticdirector for the radio station
when I was in college because Igot a sports broadcasting degree
.
Yeah, got to broadcast everyhome football, basketball,
baseball.
I did the PAC soccerchampionship game it was.
It was a lot of fun.
(02:36):
I love broadcasting but it's alot of work behind the scenes
and I don't think a lot ofpeople see that.
They just see the end result.
The show went off Great.
How did that happen?
You know, it's nice to see theman behind the scenes for sure.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You know, it's funny.
You say that Cause you know,and I was a college football
coach from 2000 till 19, 2019.
And you know, for the longesttime, you never thought about
who.
Who's putting the flag up soyou can do the Anthem.
Who's doing all these?
It's all these little bitspieces, and when one thing's out
of place, you realize, oh wow,this is a huge deal.
You know, if, if, if the linesare crooked on the field, right,
(03:13):
you know, it's like when I wasat Bethany, and I probably saw
the same way, a lot of ourstudents were doing a lot of
that work, right, and so so, if,one little if, if, you know, if
the cutie was supposed to be onlaundry and take her to the
laundry, now you've got dirtystuff.
At practice, it matters, it's ahuge you know, huge thing.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I remember that, like they were scrambling one
football game I actually had twoother people set up to announce
for the radio and director cameup to me and he was like Mike,
mike, mike, I got a seriousquestion for you.
Do you want to be the bisontoday?
I, I got a serious question foryou.
Do you want to be the bisontoday?
I was like, I was like I'msorry, he goes, he goes.
I know you got the radio thinggoing on.
(03:50):
The the normal mascot.
He is sick, he is, he cannotmake it here.
We do not have a fill in.
I was like give me, give me thehead, let's go, let's get it.
You know what I mean.
He goes, we just he goes.
We need you to amp up the crowd.
We know you have a ton ofenergy.
We figured you'd be great to doit.
I was like Beth, where, where,where could I change into this
thing?
But yeah, it's things like thatthat people don't see.
(04:13):
They just see the game go offwithout a hitch and they don't
see like, okay, now we'rescrambling to find a mascot last
minute and the players areabout to run out onto the field
and hey, hey, bono, can youthrow the bison head on real?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
quick.
Hey, the scoreboard is notworking.
I mean, it happened this yearfor one of our, our first home
game.
One of our shot, one of ourplate clocks wasn't working
properly.
Yeah, and like you know andwe're so, we're kind of
scrambling trying to figure outwhat's going on.
What's doing this.
You know we're running all overthe campus trying to find this
idea.
I'm thinking the electrician ona Saturday came in on a
(04:49):
Saturday.
Electrician's working and it'sall these little things that
work behind the scenes to makesure that, and nobody knows a
scramble right.
But they see the finishedproduct and if it doesn't work
properly, they know, and they'regoing to definitely vocal about
it.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
We had one broadcast where a mic didn't work for the
announcer.
We didn't realize it.
We got our headsets on.
We could hear ourselves talking.
Everything's going off fine.
And my producer is like textingme radio and into my head while
I'm talking about the game.
Dude, nobody can hear you.
What do you mean?
(05:22):
Nobody can hear me.
I can hear myself, fine.
He's like yeah, he goes.
There's so many people callinginto the station we can't hear
the game our son's playing.
It's his first start and theywant to listen to the game.
They're from, oh, I think thatI think he was from like montana
, so not like an easy trip towest virginia to be able to
watch their son's first start indivision three football,
(05:42):
absolutely.
And I was like, well, okay,since nobody can hear me, what
do we need?
What do I need to do?
Is it a?
Is it a connection?
Is it?
Is it with you guys?
What do we need?
Let's figure this out on thefly.
And just apologizing midwaythrough the second quarter of
the game, because that's when wegot it up and running and you
know, people were still callinginto the radio station.
(06:03):
I missed the first quarter ofmy son's first start.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And I was like it's technology.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
We want you to hear this.
We had a recap, like normallywe would get you know, 10, 15
minute break at halftime playsome music.
You know all the sponsors getthem in there and we were
sitting there recapping thefirst quarter, right, you know,
just to make sure everybody.
You know got got up to date.
But you know, I know what it'slike in west virginia this time
of year football season comingin.
(06:32):
We're in december right now.
Uh, so you're in maine.
What is that like and would yourecommend visiting maine?
What to do there?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
yeah, absolutely so, I would like.
Maine is very much a, a Midwestplace on the East coast.
Okay, we call it, we call it.
The main is a small town, man,it's a everybody knows everybody
, um, and beautiful.
So Bowdoin is located about twohours North of Boston, um, like
just to Harvard, like two hourstoward the door, but we're
(07:00):
seven miles from the ocean.
So really gorgeous part of thecountry, yeah, phenomenalal in
the summertime.
I'd say, if you have a chanceto visit here in the summertime,
do it, because it's calledVacationland and it's pretty
amazing If you like good seafood, all of it, plenty of things to
do.
Winter can get challenging, butif you're north of the
Mason-Dixon it's going to bechallenging in winter, so just
(07:27):
live with it.
You know we don't have any lakeeffect, you know, which I think
is is a great thing.
But, um, you know, we've hadour first.
We had our first snowstorm, um,uh, earlier in the week and it
was.
We had also a 60 degree day,like on wednesday, so it was
gone.
Yeah, you know.
So right now you outside youcan't even tell um, but uh, you
know it's um, you know, know,our campus it's a pretty amazing
place.
It's a really old school.
We've been around since the1700s and you know one of the
(07:52):
cool things here is academicallyone of the best schools in the
country.
So you know we're competingwith like Carnegie Mellon for
some kids every now and again.
I know you guys have yeah.
We were on a bit ago when Weavewas at Brown and when he was at
Harvard, we're recruiting thesame types of kids academically.
The kids that are walking outof here are doing great things.
(08:13):
It's a pretty great small placeto be.
I'd say if you have a chance tocome visit, come do it.
We've got one of our alumniprobably the most famous alum we
have is a guy named JoshuaChamberlain.
He's a guy basically that wonthe civil war.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So it's a little round top.
If you ever want to see themovie Gettysburg, he's played by
Jeff Daniels with the big, thebig mustache.
Yeah, Pretty cool deal, yeah.
So we've got him a statue ofhim on campus and he was a.
He was a professor here duringthe Civil War and lied to the
administration to go fightPretty cool story.
And then the other guy whocreated Netflix, Reed Hastings,
(08:50):
is an alum.
The guy who's just passed awaynow, a guy named Peter Buck.
Our athletics center is namedfor this guy named Peter Buck,
who's the guy who basicallycreated Subway Sandwiches the
business, which is pretty coolstuff.
We don't get discounts, though,on either of those.
It's what it is, but yeah, it's.
You know it's a.
It's a fun place to be.
I never thought I'd be in Mainefor almost 10 years, Right, but
(09:12):
you know, the, the, the peoplehere are awesome.
The kids are great.
You know football has beenbeing a part of the program here
, with such a long history, hasbeen awesome.
And then this, all of a lot ofother sports and just the people
, like I said, are around here.
It's been phenomenal to bearound and it's been.
It's pretty cool experienceCause.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I'm from the.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I'm from the Northeast the Northeast
originally from Connecticut, butplaces you know, as you kind of
see through my, my background,I spent a bunch of time in a
year and then went out for twoyears and I went to iowa for two
years at a small school andthen moved back to the east
coast and, um, you know, I'venever been anywhere more than
three years and to have beenhere now for for as long as I've
(09:54):
been, it's kind of amazing, um,but it's been a great place and
, like I said, really amazingpeople to be around every day
yeah, when you were at bethany.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
What years were you at bethany?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
so I was.
I was there in 2006.
So Tim Weaver's first year Iwas defensive.
Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So, yeah, I got, I got there in the fall of 2007.
I was going to say, I wassaying I don't know if you were
there when I was there or what.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, I left in February.
Yeah, I left in February and Imean I was, it was.
It was a great experience.
I know I coached a handful ofplaces before that.
I was really, but still areally young coach and in the
year that I was with that staffso Tim and Bill Garvey and all
those guys, andy Upton and allthat yeah, I learned a lot about
(10:42):
coaching.
Coaching and just just from afootball, it kind of I say all
the time the way Tim goes abouthis business as a coach kind of
completely overhauled andchanged how I did everything
from a coaching standpoint.
Next is an O standpoint, justin terms of just dealing with
players, all of it.
And I think it's it's been.
I've stuck, it's stuck with metill now and even like now that
I'm not coaching, I'm kind ofcoaching a lot of coaches Now.
(11:04):
I do a lot of like on the side,a lot of mentoring on the side,
and the things that I learnedfrom him I pass on.
You know here's how we're goingto.
You know here's how you planyour week to get everything
ready to go so that you'reprepared on a Saturday.
You know to play your game onFriday.
I play your game.
Just all these little bits andpieces, um and and um, to be
able to work on that.
You know, there with a greatgroup of kids who are really
(11:29):
hungry, you know and I'm surejohn will tell you like kind of
the experiences, like they hadnot been very successful for a
number of years before we gotthere.
Oh yeah, in our first year wewon four games, right, you know,
and won some games we probablyshouldn't have won.
And then there's some teams whoare really good and we learned
a lot.
You know w and won some gameswe probably shouldn't have won.
And then there were some teamswho were really good and we
learned a lot, right, yeah, youknow W&J and Carnegie Mellon.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
We learned a lot.
Yeah, w&j taught them a lotevery year A lot of lessons.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
But you know it's funny, the guy who's the head
coach at Grove City was afreshman quarterback at Grove
City that year.
That was our homecoming game.
We beat them Then.
They've now left E3, but ThomasMoore, the guy who's coaching
there, was their freshmanquarterback.
That's crazy.
It's crazy Again.
Really good people.
(12:19):
I say to this day I coached thelinebackers and helped work the
defense with him.
That might have still to thisday I've.
You know I've I coached thelinebackers and helped work the
defense with with him and thatmight've still to this day been
the best collection oflinebackers I've ever coached,
which is pretty impressive.
I mean it's guys who could, whoare doing some really, really
talented or big or athletic orfast and you know, for a guy who
(12:40):
was learning how to run theTampa 2 defense, those guys were
great to coach it wasphenomenal.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I just I remember Coach Weaver being there.
You know he recruited fromwithin the college too as well.
That was one thing I neverreally saw, because me and a
couple of my buddies, we werejust kind of hanging out tossing
a football around and I hadplayed football in high school,
but I was there at Bethany toswim.
(13:10):
I was a swimmer do as well andI'm, you know, we're just
sitting there seeing how far wecould throw a ball.
Just stupid 18 year old thingsto do.
And it's true, let's see how,let's see if we can blow our
shoulder out route, you know,and you know I'm just launching
them and tim comes up to me andhe goes, hey, man, you got a
cannon.
I was like, yeah, I mean, yeah,I played a little, you know, um
(13:30):
, and I didn't know who he wasat the time, uh, so I just kind
of was joking around with him.
I was like, yeah, man, I mean Igot the best quarterback stats,
uh, in brook high schoolhistory.
Like he goes, really, I waslike, yeah, playoff game this
past the past year, um, we ran awide receiver reverse pass, I
threw the ball, one completion,uh, 75 yards for a touchdown.
(13:52):
So you know I'm one for one ahundred percent completion,
percentage touchdown, theinterception ratio is off the
charts.
And you know he kind of giggled,he goes we'd love to have
somebody like you on the team.
I was just like, uh, your coacharen't you?
He was like, yeah.
I was like, yeah, I appreciatethat I'm here to swim.
I'm not screwing that up, but Iappreciate it.
(14:16):
Uh.
So yeah, like we were talkingabout there, but you coached
with weaver.
Uh, bob nizole, andy upton,bill Garvey and Mr Askew all
former guests of the show here.
Oh man, we love Mr here on theshow and he's a big fan and a
big supporter of the show oh man.
We love him.
I mean, you touched on it alittle bit about Weaver, but
those other guys there, you knowwhat was that like, coaching
(14:39):
with that collection of guys?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, it know, I think the cool part for me, you
know, because you know bobby andlike ryan lieb, you know yeah
he gets it come back and to helpcoach a little bit too.
Um, a bunch of guys who werereally passionate about the
college and they knew the placereally inside and out and so
they could really do it.
They really did a great jobrelating to the guys.
So it's great having a youngstaff of guys who could relate
(15:03):
to kids from kind of all over,you know, and who were
go-getters in the recruitingprocess too and that's, I mean,
that's how you get good, is yougot to get.
You got to have great playersand you got to have kids who
bought in and and you knoweverywhere that you know it's
kind of funny, those guys, we wegot in there, I got hired.
We got hired in Februarybasically, and you know, going
through like theseason program,winter conditioning, all the
(15:25):
kind of stuff that we were doing, you know guys had to kind of
really buy into what we weredoing and they bought in and
they brought in a guy like MattCruz.
You know who's just.
You know to this day, just oneof the best players I've been
around, you know, and it's oneof the guys just kind of running
around.
You know Brent Owens was one ofour quarterbacks.
(15:51):
You know a bunch of guys justkind of running around doing
their thing and just buying intowhat we were doing.
You know Mike Elias and allthese great players who just you
know, I think we're kind oflooking for some direction and
got it.
You know, and that was the firsttime I'd been around an offense
that was like spread running,like the zone read time I'd been
around an offense that was likespread running, like the zone
read, um, and it was no, it's nohuddle and we bought what.
So what Gar was doingoffensively, you know what gave
us a chance to be reallysuccessful?
Um, and we had a lot of answers.
(16:12):
And then, you know,schematically, we were doing
some really good things ondefense and so the X's and O's
were going to be great and justgetting the guys to buy into the
hard work and the team aspect.
And even to this day we'vetalked about here and what you
see with great programs is, yeah, they focus on their opponents,
but they really are.
It's about what they're doing,and Tim used to talk all the
(16:33):
time.
We say all the time hey, we'vegot to have this great focus
about how we do our business.
You know, if we're, if we dowhat we've got, what we've got
to do, to the best of ourability, everything else takes
care of itself.
And I think, as we talk to anyplace, any program, any company
that's successful, yeah, you'vegot to know who your opposition
is, your competition is, but thecompetition it's in the mirror
(16:53):
and you know how do you do thethings that you do to the best
of your ability, what are thethings that are your strengths,
what are your weaknesses?
How do you make them strengths?
Now, how do you take thosethings that are strong and make
them stronger?
You know, and and that's, Ithink, the process that we went
through as coaching staff withthese guys, um, just in
ourselves as coaches, and Ithink that was great to kind of
(17:14):
see how we got ourselves betteras well.
You know, and um, you know, andyou know there's some guys who
aren't coaching you more,unfortunately, but I think would
be great to stay in it if theycould have.
You know, like you know, andnow garves the, the ad, down at
brook and he's like collegecoaches now, just like like holy
cow.
I talked the other day I waslike how you pulling that one
off, it was really impressive.
(17:34):
But I think you get.
You get people who are going tobuy into a mindset and
mentality and and that's what's,that's what, uh, that's what
it's all about.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
I definitely yeah, garf, being the AD there at
Brook, I joked around with him.
It's my alma mater, Brook.
You know I went there and theywould let one of the coaches go
and my nephews are playing there.
So I definitely still follow upand see what's going on there.
And I just shot him a quicktext Just bust his chops.
Like, hey, man, if you want aformer player to come back and
(18:04):
coach hit me, hit your boy up.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I'll definitely come back and coach for you.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Gar, absolutely, you can buy into that process
because I knew how Garby ranthings.
Absolutely.
But yeah, he's doing big thingswith the coaches.
He's bringing into Brooke.
I'm hoping they can turn thatprogram around like we did when
we were there.
I around like we did when wewere there.
I mean, I dabbled a little bitinto coaching a couple summers
ago.
In swimming it's a littledifferent, but I was an
(18:31):
assistant coach for a summerswim program for a local high
school here, tri-valley, whereI'm at, and the head coach for
that team was the head coach forthe swim team for Tri-Valley.
So she's like you're acollegiate swimmer.
You've had a great resume forswimming.
You had a chance at the 2012olympic trials.
Like I want you to work with myhigh school kids.
(18:52):
I mean, this team has 96 kidson it, you know, from 8 to 18.
I want you working with thehigh school team.
And she saw me focusing on acouple different of the athletes
and of the swimmers and shecame over to me.
She's like why are you reallyhoning in on these three?
They're not even my best threeswimmers.
I said I'm not looking for yourbest three swimmers, I don't
(19:13):
need to worry about that.
They know what to do.
They're doing their thing.
I'm looking for the rightswimmers that have the right
mindset, that want to put in thework, that are willing to
listen to what I have to tellthem.
Right, and the these kids,their strokes fine, there's
nothing wrong with the stroke,maybe a little bit of mechanics,
but it's.
It's summer, you know, we'renot in swim season, and this one
(19:34):
she needs one little extrastroke at the end and she'll
drop her time by probably threetenths of a second.
And she was like, really, I waslike, watch, do this with her.
And did it.
And lo and behold, that uh girlbecame a regional champion,
that's awesome.
And swimming that year, that'sawesome, and it's.
(19:55):
She was like, wow, I neverwould have thought.
I was like, yeah, I see things,you see these kids daily, the
little things that you think youwould see.
Right, you're missing.
I'm a completely fresh,unbiased eyes and I saw these
things because I had thesethings.
When I was swimming, A coach, anassistant coach, came to me and
, lo and behold, it was mystarts.
I was a backstroker.
(20:17):
In college.
They moved me to backstrokefull-time.
I never really was abackstroker.
My starts were off.
It was costing me a half asecond to a second on my times
and my assistant coach came upto me and she she was just like
try this, just just try, I'lltry anything if it drops me a
(20:37):
couple seconds.
The next meet we were in a relay.
I would enter um the im relayand I was leading up as the
backstroker and after the raceguys were looking up like we
dropped the relay time by likethree seconds.
How did we drop our time bythree seconds?
And I looked up I went oh,there it is.
I dropped my backstroke splitby three seconds.
(20:59):
It dropped three seconds off ofmy time, which is an eternity
in swimming.
Just from a little.
Pull yourself up a little bitmore on the start.
That was her only critique.
It's amazing.
Your launch is great, yourstreamline's great.
Pull yourself up a little bitmore on that start.
(21:20):
Watch what happens.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Drop three seconds.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
It's amazing.
It's insane to me.
My first college job was atNorwich University in Vermont.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Drop three seconds.
It's amazing.
It's insane to me.
My first college job was atNorwich University in Vermont.
It's the oldest privatemilitary school in the country.
It's a school where ROTC wascreated and I remember one of my
first meetings on their campus.
Our head coach at the time, whoI had played for at another
college, at Dickinson College inPennsylvania, had said he goes
look, we've got a rifle rivalryteam here.
(21:47):
Naturally it's a militaryschool.
He says when you're rivalry,when you have a rivalry
competition, the scores look inthe thousands.
And so he goes if you win yourrivalry match 2000 to 1999, you
don't know which bullet it wasthat made the difference.
And so you never know what thelittle thing is going to be that
(22:08):
can make the difference.
But those little things add upand they and and that's where I
think, and I think right, that'sthe message, more so now as we
kind of talk through like he'stalking, like young kids and
then in in young athletes, theydon't necessarily see that
because they see the big pictureright at the end.
Well, hey, if you understandthat the little thing is going
to be the difference maker, youmay not know it, but you just
(22:31):
got, you still got to work at it.
What's you know?
It's the guy who's trying to,who's struggling foul shooting.
Maybe it's the one littleadjustment here and there and
that's what takes that coach,hey, a coach with some fresh
eyes to see that sometimes, yeah, and and hey, and, being
willing to try new things and bewilling to fail because hey, oh
yeah okay, who cares.
You know you tried it.
Unless you tried it, yeah, youknow that's been.
(22:52):
I think.
So one of the things that Ithat I deal with here at bowden
is we've got a lot of studentshere who are like those a
personality go-getter kidsthey've never had.
They've never had a b, they'venever had a c or d in school.
They get to college and theyfail and they get an F on a
paper, the first paper, andtheir world comes crashing down.
You try something and it failed.
(23:13):
Now let's try some new things,some new ideas, and take a deep
breath and realize that's justfeedback for you.
You're going to be okay Knowingthat they're in a school
because they had an F on a paperas a freshman in college.
You're going to be okay.
You know you're going to getthe jobs.
They're still going to come.
You're going to be all right.
Just a matter of okay.
Let's take a deep breath andfigure out your process and
(23:35):
what's going to be, how we getyou from there, from here to the
next spot, so that you can gobe confident doing what you're
doing and and like to your pointit's like those little things
here and there that maybethey've been doing things a
certain way for a really longtime and it's worked for them.
And now, hey, now you're indeep water and you got to figure
out, okay, what are those newthings I got to adjust, or what
I got to get better at, orthings maybe that coasted on
(23:56):
because I could and I didn'trealize I was coasting on, and
that's, I think, a great.
It's a, it's a great teachingtool for for our students for
sure, um you know, yeah, a lotof our athletes especially yeah,
I was that stubborn athlete.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I'll tell you that.
You know, even going intocollege, like coach mcgowan
wanted me to learn thebreaststroke, could never do the
breaststroke.
And I've been swimming since Iwas eight.
I still can't do thebreaststroke.
I don't know why I can't get mylegs to do what what they're
supposed to do.
Yeah, and I fought him on it.
He was like well, I might needyou for this hunter brushstroke
(24:32):
in this next meet.
I was just like we're probablygonna have to dq that one coach.
I can't do that.
I'm telling you right now Ican't do the brush.
I'm gonna either not show upand we're gonna get dq'd for not
showing up, or I'm gonna dosomething wrong and we're still
gonna get dQ'd.
I'm trying to save us a littlebit.
He was like alright, well thencome with me.
He cleared everybody out of asingle lane and goes hang on to
(24:52):
the deep end wall and you can'tleave until you do 100
breaststroke kicks.
I was like why do I?
Is it because I bucked back atyou?
Is that why you're punishing menow?
He's like no, no you why you'repunishing me now?
He's like no, no, you'll thankme later.
I don't think my legs are gonnathank you after this coach.
I'm just gonna I'm not gonnalie to you here like this is,
this is brutal, but and he stoodthere and if I did one wrong it
(25:14):
didn't count.
It was like it was like thatmilitary school that you were
just talking about, you know,and it's that little thing.
And he was like you know whatyou say.
You can't do it point your toea little bit more here when you
come up and the strokes got alittle bit better.
I did the event, did not do well, but you know, I I did the
(25:36):
event.
We didn't dq, we didn't dq andI I was.
I was already going into thatevent like yep, this is not
going to go well for us and I'mgoing to have a dq on my record
and that's not good for me, uh.
But you know, listen to coach.
You know I always, yeah, Ialways I'm not looking for the
best, I'm looking for the rightathlete.
Yeah, and that that was that'smy mentality when I would know
(25:58):
in in coaching and that.
But you left bethany, like yousaid, in 2006 season.
I believe it was for the.
Was it for the university ofnotre dame?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
yeah, can you talk about that experience a little
bit?
Yeah, it's kind of funny.
So, um, one of the guys that wehad worked with at harvard was
working at notre dame and uh,charlie weiss was looking to
hire some new young coaches, umon the staff, to kind of be like
the low totem pole people, andhe hired four people.
So I mean, we've asked me itwas do you, do you want to apply
(26:28):
for the job?
Now?
I grew up as a Notre Dame fanand okay, but you know we had
gone four and six at Bethanylike, all right, I'm my first
time being a coordinator, I'mlearning how to do this thing.
Do I really want to walk awayfrom that, to kind of start from
scratch?
And I went home over theholidays and asked a bunch of
people what I should do and Idecided I'm gonna go, I'm gonna
take a shot and go for it,interviewed, ended up getting
(26:50):
hired, um, it's kind of funnythat the guy I shared an office
with um is, uh, shane waldron,who's just the oc with the bears
.
Yeah, I'm assuming it would notsurprise me if she doesn't end
up at north carolina with coachbelichick they're together with
the patriots and then PatrickGraham, who's the coordinator
for the Raiders.
He's my roommate for two years,okay, so we get there in 2007,
(27:16):
and it was interesting because Isay the great part of it was A
Notre Dame's an amazing place.
I think if you ever get a chanceto go there or be a part of.
It was A.
Notre Dame is an amazing place.
You know, I think if you everget a chance to go there or be a
part of it, even people whohate Notre Dame you go and you
visit.
It's like, oh my God, thisplace is different.
It's a small college playingbig time college sports and
(27:39):
that's why their fans are sorabid and obnoxious and annoying
, because that's just who theyare.
But they've earned it a littlebit.
The kids are awesome to bearound.
They're just phenomenal youngpeople.
Some guys who I still talk toall the time and you know, just
they happen to be growing up onnational television every
Saturday and going through sometough times because we were
(28:00):
there in 07 when we were one ofthe worst teams in the country.
You know you just graduated.
You know Brady Quinn and JustinMargin, all these guys and you
walk in with a freshmanquarterback in Jimmy Clawson and
you know Golden Tate's afreshman, all these guys and
they learn what they learned by.
They learned by losing.
You know we were, we were threeand nine.
Their freshman year lost Navyfor the first time in 45 years
(28:21):
and just, you're going throughthat experience and you're
trying to just and they justkept coming back, which is
awesome to see because they hada ton of character the next year
, you know a bunch of guys gethurt mid season but ended up
winning a bowl game.
You hadn't won a bowl gamesince, since Lou Holtz was
coaching there.
Right, that was a big.
That was a big experience andyou know it was.
I didn't.
(28:42):
I never knew that you couldwork as hard as you had to work.
Um, I worked really hard.
You know as, as young guys onstaff, you're the ones in there
doing all the film work, doingall the.
You know you're.
You're the ones you knowstaying at the hotel on official
visits, make sure kids arestaying out of trouble.
You're you're living in thedorm over the summer when the
guys were, when the guys reportbecause, hey, they got to make
sure they.
You're in charge of that stuffand you know it was.
(29:07):
You know a lot of work.
You're in early.
You're leaving late.
You know not getting a lot ofsleep.
I'm still trying to figure outhow to sleep regulated now.
You know 20, some odd yearslater.
But you know also, again,learned a lot of football,
learned a lot of X's and O's,learned a lot of just dealing
with people and you know thoseare kids, are kids again, same
(29:28):
thing, very much go-getter kids.
They.
They struggle sometimes withthe with, you know, doing what
they have to do, like and justcutting it loose.
You know, and I think as youwatch them now I mean they've
got some guys who can do that.
I think it's been a great jobrecruiting by the last few
staffs on there and the cats hasthere.
Now they've.
But when you see kids who, thechallenge of really, really
(29:50):
smart kids sometimes is theyoveranalyze everything right and
they're just stuck there.
you know, I think about guyslike you know.
So obviously bethany has, likethe, the scholarship program, or
if you get the, get the fullride, if you let like I forget
what they call it, but daveobble, you know, got it, yeah,
in school, and you know thosetypes of kids sometimes just
(30:10):
they get paralyzed, theyoverthink you, they want to be
perfect, right, they overthinkthings, and that same thing
would happen there, um, and youknow, you get some guys who are
just like, remember, we had akid who's a really talented, you
know, high, high recruit out ofcollege and he was a scout team
player and if we didn't tellhim what to do on every single
play, he just stood there, youknow, and just cause he's just
(30:32):
analyzing analyzing everythingyou know.
And and so getting guys to trusttheir ability and to.
You know, that was kind of theprocess there, but it worked out
and you know, I was able to.
I still a lot of things that interms of just things like you
never thought about.
So here's an example Like whenwe were on the road for games,
we would meet all the time and Inever understood why we did it
(30:57):
until I became a head coach.
Yeah, and actually, honestly, Ifigured it out the year after I
left, because we were I was ata Division II school in Iowa.
We were on a road trip and infact I think we were going to
figure out who we were going togo play and guys were late to
the bus leaving the hotel.
The coach said we're leaving at9am, guys are walking on the
bus at nine o'clock and he's,he's furious, right and well,
(31:23):
and I'm sitting there going,okay.
Well, we never told them to beearly for the bus.
We told them the bus leaves atnine and and I guess and and
before that our staff had gottenthere.
That was never really a thing,that was that was kind of
explained to them and so I saidall right, so let's have a
meeting five minutes before it'stime to go.
That way you're on time for thebus.
Yeah, I'd rather have you latefor the bus, late for the
meeting, than late for the bus.
(31:44):
I'm not gonna leave a playerright.
it's like life happens you're on, you're on the road in a hotel,
bad breakfast, you get kids,you know whatever happens you
get something yeah you know atleast now, if you're late to the
meeting we can deal with it,versus hey, if you're, if you're
late to the bus, we're leavingsome kid, I'm not, we're not
doing that.
That's especially this day andage.
You can't do that so absolutelyyou know, and I'm oh, that's why
(32:05):
we did it, because I don't wantJimmy Clawson late to the game,
because we need that guy.
I mean we can talk tough abouthey, whatever, but that guy's a,
he's a dude, absolutely so itwas.
It was some great lessons fromthat standpoint and just also
just in terms of like, just thegame planning aspect of things.
You know, we were so thorough,schematically, you just got to
(32:29):
have better players thaneverybody else and that's at
that level.
You're playing against someguys that were just flat out
better, right, I mean, at thattime USC at the time was rolling
.
I mean, yeah, they were.
I mean we lost to Matt, mattSanchez twice.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
And it wasn't close.
They were better than us.
We beat Michigan.
My second year.
That was Rick Rod's first yearthere, but the year before they
smoked us they had a bunch ofthat was Ryan Mallett and Jake
Long and all those guys and it'slike you're going through.
I still have the old scoutingreports going that guy, that guy
, that guy, that guy's getting agold jacket.
(33:07):
It's like, oh great, no wonderwe got our faces ripped off.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
You know yeah I, I still even remember that in
college, you know, swimmingagainst teal, yeah, and did not
know, yeah, walking into it,that they were that good of a
swim program, right, and wethought it was weird because one
it was a distance meet and forme I was a spreader, you know,
200 yards was my max, right, andthat wasn't even pushing it,
(33:33):
yeah, and that was the shortestevent that I swam that day.
And you know, going into it,and their pool wasn't in yards
like Bethany was, it was inmeters, so it was an
Olympic-style pool.
Oh yeah, it was in meters, soit was an olympic style pool.
Oh yeah, it's like all right,there's a d3 college that has a
olympic size pool in meters, notin yards, right, and we walked
(33:54):
in.
We're used to, you know,bethany college.
The swim program was very small.
When I was there I was 104 guyson the team.
So you know, very small teamand you know we parents, a
couple parents coming, you knowa couple friends coming to watch
you girlfriends, whateverBoyfriends are there just to
watch their significant othersand everything like that.
But then we get to deal and theplace is packed.
(34:17):
There's, there's, there's aband playing, there's the
mascots there and I'm looking atmy buddy going where the hell
are we Like?
What are we in the Olympicsright now?
Are they that good?
Are they still that good?
And my buddy has been swimmingthere for a couple of years.
He was like, oh, you're in fora treat today.
(34:37):
I was just like, okay, so theseguys are just that much better
than us?
Is that?
Is that the case?
The case, and I still rememberit was.
It was the 500 uh meterbackstroke brutal event for me.
And I remember finishing therace.
I mean at the time I think itwas like 20 laps in the pool.
(34:57):
It's a long, long time.
You're used to swimming four toeight, you know.
So I remember because the rulein swimming isn't not a lot of
people know this is you know,just because you finish.
The rule in swimming isn't nota lot of people know this is you
know, just because you finishthe race.
If everyone isn't finished, youcannot leave that lane,
otherwise you were disqualified.
That means getting out of thepool.
Yes, you have to stay in thatlane.
(35:18):
And I just remember finishingand being like, oh, thank god,
I'm done.
And I looked and the guysaren't even huffing and puffing
anymore.
That's how long after they hadfinished that.
It took me to finish the racebecause I never knew how to pace
myself in distance.
My mindset as a sprinter is goas fast as you can, as hard as
you can for the entirety of therace.
(35:40):
And I look around, I'll beatred.
And these guys are like, hey,good job.
I was like you don't have tosugarcoat that man.
That sucked, you're good, goodfor you, man.
I looked at his thumbs.
I was like dude, those areawesome times, man, good for you
, but yeah it's crazy, like youtalked about, like we.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
So it's funny, in 06, Teal has just coming off
winning the conferencechampionship.
Yeah, and we played them athome.
And I remember, you know, wehad a great week of practice and
we were, as a staff, liketrying to think okay, we weren't
sure, like, how good we were,how good they were Like I mean
they were good on tape.
And then, literally in thefirst five minutes, I remember
we going, oh, you guys are muchbetter than we are.
(36:19):
Let's hang on to it and let'sjust do what we can to.
You know, make it respectable.
And, and you know we didn't I'dlike to say to the players but
you're just going to do what yougotta do, let's not, you know,
let's not beat ourselves by,cause these guys don't need any
help beating us.
So we've got to go, but that'sit's.
It's it's always.
I think it's always good tokind of, hey, get out of your
comfort zone.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
And then and learn hey, if this thing happens, Now
you have an experience for it,now you can coach a kid who's
going to go do that thing Maybehe's never done it before.
Or maybe if there's an injuryand you need a kid who's a
sprinter to go and do a distance, here's your plan, here's your
path, here's how you do it.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Learn how to pace yourself.
Again, I was one of those cockyathletes, in college too as
well.
I hate to admit it, but I was.
You know, looking back, I'm 35now I can look back at you.
At 18 I was.
I was cocky, I was notconfident.
I was cocky and the coach wasjust like, and you know, he had
me in the distance lane thatweek of practice for the teal,
for the teal mate.
I was like why does he have meover here like I'm cooking these
(37:22):
people, like they're they're,they're slower swimmers than me,
they're distance, or that's whythey're they're.
They're slower swimmers than me, their distance, or that's why
they're they're here.
And he was, and he I thought hewas joking he was like you
gotta get ready for that 500backstroke.
I was like, okay, coach, yeah,good, one 500 backstroke, all
right, good luck, good luckhaving that happen.
It's not happening, coach.
And it happened.
And yet you know it's one ofthose ones that you know it's
(37:43):
like yeah, I learned a lot thatmeet.
I don't say that I failed.
Yeah, obviously I swam theworst, worst time I've ever swam
in my life.
But I learned a lot aboutmyself and from that point, on.
I finished the race I did notquit.
There's no quit in me If I hadto just float back to the start
(38:05):
finish line, there was nostopping me.
And I learned a lot becausethat was about midway through
the season that we had that meet.
And I just remember after that,whatever coach said, you got to
coach, yep, let's do it.
All right, you got me in the200 again.
All right, let's go.
(38:25):
I got you.
I learned how to, I learned howto pace myself for that first
hundred.
You know, and it's just littlethings like we talked about
earlier, little things like thatthat make athletics fun and
make coaching fun.
You know I I even had that inthe shortened time one year that
I was an assistant coach in asummer swim program trying to
(38:49):
trying to get kids to.
You know, buy in and listen tothe, to the advice, and you know
a lot of them are like, well,I'm not a district champion.
it's like okay, now we knowwhere you want to work, let's
put the work in now you thinkit's going to happen in your
little short swim season in inhigh school and to get to
districts.
No, it starts now in the summer, when you're thinking, oh, we
(39:10):
could relax.
This is a summer swim program,it's supposed to be fun, and
blah, blah, blah.
It's like I don't know aboutyou, but winning's fun to me,
yeah, winning's fun it's aprocess.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, so it's funny you talk about that.
Like the thing that I do now isI talk to a lot of our athletes
is when we've got some guys,maybe kids, who are maybe we're
going through some crisis ofconfidence or just trying to
learn stuff.
You know I'm a big big readerand so like there are a couple
of books that I kind of push onkids.
Hey, look, you know, so are you?
Are you still his fan?
(39:40):
Yeah, so, naturally so.
Russell Wilson's is actuallyjust his best friend just passed
away from cancer a couple ofyears ago and you know he, that
guy, wrote a book called itTakes what it Takes, and and
that is a book about kind of toyour point, hey, it's going to
(40:02):
take you this long to learn thisthing.
It may take.
It may take person over there10 days, it may take you 20 days
, it's going to take, it's goingto take what it's going to take
.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
And the way that you attack that that time's going to
take is going to determine howsuccessful you are with.
And then the other, the otherguys got in.
Uh, josh, um, I got to look athis name.
I'll, I'll, I'll email you thenames of the guys.
But he wrote a book called chopwood, carry water.
(40:38):
You know, I wrote a book calledum wind in the dark, and this
is kind of to your point, andthe wind in the dark is about.
It's a, it's a parallel.
Basically it's about a kid whois gonna go do this, this like
really dangerous sporting event,and how he's got to learn to do
all these things to besuccessful when no one's
watching, yeah Right, and so ifyou want to be great at this
thing, it's when no one'swatching you do it.
(40:58):
You're not winning districtsduring districts.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
No.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
You win over the summer.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
You don't win football games.
Today is the quarterfinals ofD3, right, those games aren't
one day.
They're won in in december andin january and february and
march and april and sometimewhen you're on your own without
your coaches, that's when youwin those games and and the
level of commitment to that andthe level of of detail to those
(41:27):
things is what it will determineif you have a chance to be
successful.
Sometimes you're going againstTeal.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
It's what it is.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
To hold your own, to compete.
It doesn't happen today, ithappened months ago.
It's a huge lesson for kids tolearn, for people in general to
learn.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I had a couple of buddies in high school.
I wasn't a of buddies in inhigh school, I wasn't a four
year starter at football.
You know I I earned my spot mysenior year on special teams.
You know from the work I put infour years and I was that
habitual scout, team player andyou know it.
(42:10):
It guys didn't see.
You know I was going out withmy dad in the in the summertime
and I wasn't allowed to doanything I wanted to do till I
caught a hundred balls as areceiver.
Until you catch a hundred balls, if I throw I have to throw you
400 for you to catch a hundred.
Till you catch a hundred ballswe're not you can't do anything.
(42:33):
And you know, even in practice,you know getting beat up by the
starters just guys that are justlike looking to punish the
scout team players and poppingright back up and going back
into the, into the huddle forthe next, next play.
And you know it's it coach atthe, at the bag, what, what was
like he was probably the.
(42:53):
He goes and I mean this in thebest way possible the dumbest
and toughest person on ourfootball team.
He goes.
I've seen him get his headtaken off in practice to where
his helmet literally flew fiveyards the opposite direction.
He got up, grabbed his helmet,put it back on and went back
into the huddle.
Finished the play he broke afinger and it was literally
laying across the other twofingers.
(43:14):
He had the trainer pop it backin, tape it up and he was back
in after that and he just didn'tknow how to stop working like
they.
There was times they had toliterally like pat me.
So go, go, sit down now.
You need, you need a minute.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
So you want to work, but that's the work that I would
rather have to pull kids back,pull people back from working
too hard, than having to pushthem to work harder.
Yeah, absolutely, athletics isspecial.
We've got kids here andeverywhere.
(43:53):
I mean people who come to these, these colleges and even high
schools and and and and youthteams, whatever who bring a lot
of baggage with them.
You know, you know if it's.
You know I tell coaches all thetime hey, you know, if a kid
comes from a broken home, thekid didn't break the home.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Right, you know what I mean.
Something happened.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Something's happening , so we got to deal with it as
coaches.
We got to deal with it as asthe adults in the room and help
and help them find their theirway to get, get to where they
want to get to.
That's what coaching is aboutin general.
Right, it's about getting thatperson to be at their best when
it counts.
Yeah, and it takes to do that,and, and yeah, that's you know,
fine, you know your dad pushingyou, even if you want to do it
and the days you don't want todo it.
Those are the ones right and Iworked with a guy a couple years
(44:38):
ago here at bowden um who usedto talk about.
You know their easy days andtheir hard days.
First day of practice easy day,everybody's all geeked up,
pumped up.
First game easy it's.
It's practice 20 or 30 whereyou're the monotony of it.
You know that's, that's thepart, that's the hard day.
Can you bring the same energy,the same juice, the same focus
to those days?
(44:58):
You know, when no one'swatching, you know to be where
you, so you can get you, knowingthat, hey, the outcome is going
to get you what you want.
I give you a chance get whatyou want absolutely that's.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
That's.
Yeah, yeah, it's just.
I remember that.
I just remember them pullingyou back.
Yeah, literally, there's grasshanging out of your helmet
because you've been planted somany times.
Take a minute, yep, take abreath, grab some water, come
back.
They wouldn't let me come backin.
Sometimes it's like all right,coach, I'm good, I got a jug of
(45:39):
water, I'm good.
He's.
No, no, we're gonna letsomebody else get some work.
All right, that's just it.
I need to work, coach, thatthat's me.
It earned me a spot on our kickcoverage team.
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (45:43):
like, and that's that was huge for me as a senior.
And deep down inside yourteammates know it.
That's the best part, right?
Those, they're seeing you, they, they see the work and we see
it now too, like there's a.
There's a whole world now where, you know, I've had, we've had
people come and speak at thecollege about different things
and you know the idea of the tryhard.
Well, give me a team, try hardall day, every day, all day,
(46:04):
every day.
Yeah, we'll pull them back.
You know, give me kids who, whoare committed to being the best
version of themselves they canbe, because ultimately they they
may not get there, but they'regoing to work at it and if they
fail, they fail, so be it, I'drather fail, you know, aiming
for being the best and whateverhappens happens.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Yeah, absolutely, and we're running near the end of
the time here, so I want to getthis last question in this last
segment.
But if someone is interested inuh, bonan in university there,
uh, what, you know what's tolearn more, you know how to find
them and everything like that.
So you know, tell everyone youknow.
If there's an email or anythingthat we can put down in the
description, tell everyone wherethey can find you.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, uh, boden, um, you
know, uh, you can go on awebsite.
It's a pretty, pretty in-depthone B-O-W-D-O-I-N, dot E -D-U,
and then athletics at Bowdoin.
You can kind of look at allthat part of it.
But just as a school, about1800 students, just again a
really amazing place where we'rejust finishing early decision
(47:07):
one right now We've got we takeabout 500 kids a year, um, and
you know we're trying to getkids all over the country, all
over the world, to come here, um, it's great little, this tiny
little place in Maine, man, it's, it's, you know, kind of a ton
of majors.
You know, I think a lot of ourathletes are either going into
like the finance world, pre-law,pre-med, um, a couple, a couple
(47:28):
people going to education andthey're kind of doing pretty
amazing things when they walkout of here, which has been
great.
I would say that in this dayand age where, where the economy
is where it is, the majority ofour students are walking out of
here with the job they want,which I think is kind of a
unique situation.
Our alumni are really engaged.
We actually just had our men'sbasketball team was actually out
(47:50):
here at Ecclewood Woods lastweek.
They played out at um, atcarnegie mellon, carnegie mellon
, um in a tournament and, uh, weactually had an alumni event
while we're out there, and sowe've got a bunch of people out
there as well.
And, um, I will say that I'venever been in a place where all
the alumni are as passionateabout a place as they are and
(48:12):
they're going to.
If you're, if you're in theplay on Broadway, they're coming
to support you and act likejackasses in the stands.
They're cheering you on, whichI think is a pretty awesome
thing.
You know, and I think therethere are places where the
alumni are really tied to theplace.
I think Bethany's one of thoseplaces.
This place has been just for meand my time here, just this
(48:34):
amazing experience to see thesepeople who come from all over
the world and, to this day, arestill the closest of friends.
I mean, I'm on a text chainwith 40 alumni who get together
and have dinner every othermonth, just hanging out at a
Mexican restaurant and havingdinner, just talking about their
time here and how it's helpful,and then you know if a kid
(48:55):
wants to go, do this, that orthe other thing, they'll,
they'll, they'll get your help.
They'll get your help.
They'll talk to you about it,and then they're at the top of a
hat and that's.
And then our professors areamazing.
I mean they, they come to games.
We've got, like I said, 31sports, so a third of our
student body are athletes at oneof the top 10 ranked schools in
the country, and we've gotprofessors in the stands
watching games, grading paperswhile watching games and
(49:16):
cheering on being crazy.
It's been awesome.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
So that's awesome.
It's a pretty amazing, prettyunique place.
Um, and I've thought, I neverthought I'd be, like I said, be
at a place this long uh,especially in Maine, of all
places, but it's, it's beenawesome to be a part of it.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
That's awesome.
So, yeah, everybody, I will putthe link there in the
description of this episode hereto listen to.
But, kevin, I do have to getthis segment in.
It is the last and finalsegment here and I don't let
anybody know about this becauseit is the fast 55,.
Five random questions from thewonderful manager of the podcast
(49:49):
, johnny.
He sent these to me today, umso, cause he had, I know we had
a rescheduling, uh conflict lasttime we were supposed to record
here, so he sent me a whole newset of questions Cause he wants
it to be a surprise for both ofus.
These are kind of rapid fire,but you can elaborate if you
need to.
All right, all right.
So question number one all youcan eat crab legs, yay or nay?
(50:11):
Yay, I mean, come on, that's a,that's a toss-up for the first
question.
Come on now, let's here we go,here we go.
This.
This is a hundred percent afitting question.
If 20 horses fought fivegiraffes, who wins?
Speaker 2 (50:28):
giraffes okay, yeah I can see that it's range it's.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
It's normally good.
Yeah, you got to get that range.
Yep, that's where I wasthinking.
All right, question numberthree the best flavor of
popsicle is oh uh grape grape,yeah.
Grape or orange for me, it'sgrape or orange for me.
It's great for orange for me,all right.
Canoeing, overrated orunderrated canoeing, canoeing uh
(50:55):
underrated great exercise.
I actually taught it um for twoyears at uh upper iowa
university oh, I knew he wasgoing to add this question in
here and you're going to knowwhy as soon as I read it.
Are nhlL players more athleticthan Olympic swimmers?
(51:15):
Yeah, some of them are, not all, some of them are.
As somebody that was an Olympichopeful in swimming, I knew
he's been waiting four yearsWe've been doing this show to
get that dig in.
But you know what, I'm a hugeNHL fan too as well in.
But you know what, I'm a hugenhl fan too as well.
So you know those guys arefreak athletes.
(51:36):
I'll give you that.
But yeah, that was the fast 85and he gave you a couple
toss-ups in there, but then wegot back to a little bit more of
the, the finer questions of ofjohnny's mind and how it works.
That is phenomenal.
Kevin, I give every guest thisopportunity at the end of every
show.
If there's anything you want toget out there, anything else
you want to promote, whetherit's for the college, anything
(51:57):
like that, or even if it's justa good message, I'm going to
give you about a minute.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Man on the floor is yours my message honestly is
this is we live in a world wherepeople who are now being like
just generally nice people seemsto be a negative thing.
It costs nothing to be a niceperson, say please and thank you
and all that stuff.
Just treat folks with dignityand respect.
It's not that hard.
(52:20):
It's not that hard.
It makes everything else go alot faster, a lot easier.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Yeah, I love it when people end it on a good message
like that.
I really do.
I mean, I'm all for helpingpeople promote anything that
they got going on for themselves, but when it's a good message
like that, I absolutely love it.
But that is actually going todo it for this week's episode of
the ride home rants podcast.
I want to thank my guests again.
Kevin Loney for joining theshow here.
(52:46):
A lot of fun to get to talk toyou.
Talk at sports, all to talk toyou.
Talk at Sports, all Things,coaching and your journey and
everything like that.
It was an amazing one.
It's great to listen to.
As always, if you enjoyed theshow, be a friend, tell a friend
.
If you didn't tell them anyways, they might like it just
because you didn't.
That's going to do it for meand I will see y'all next week.
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