#312: Colin Hunter-Byron Center (MI) High School

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
with host Mike Cunningham. Track and field world UNL tuned
in to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.

(00:23):
Oh, you're back right here on the Gill Athletics Connections
podcast. Hey, I, I just got back from a
trip and so I got to, and I drove like 1000 miles.
And so I got to listen to some playbacks of some episodes.
And I noticed that when I do my intro here and I tell you who I
am and my name and all that kindof stuff, that is in the span of
30 seconds, the third time that you've heard my name, it

(00:44):
literally I say my name at the beginning of the song and then
in the song. That is our intro from our great
friend Udon Cheek at East Carolina University.
It says my name again, and then I come in and say Mike.
So I'm done. I'm not saying my name anymore.
If you don't know who I am, you didn't listen to the intro song,
which you should because a trackcoach created that.
He's amazing. Udon is awesome.
Check him out on Spotify. He's actually his new song.

(01:04):
I'm free, just dropped on Spotify as well.
I listened to it this morning inthe weight room and it was
stinking cool. So we don't need to introduce me
anymore. So we get to spend more time and
get straight to our guest. Help me welcome the head coach
of Byron Center High School in the beautiful state of Michigan,
the wise, the wonderful Mr. Colin Hunter.
Colin, how are you, Sir? I'm good.
Thank you for having me. Absolutely, man, You're coming.

(01:25):
You're either your message was you're either coming from
practice or you just set them out on practice.
You're you're right in the thickof it right now.
Yeah. So I had enough time to get our
distance runners through their workout.
I coached the distance group in addition to being the head
coach. So we quick got through a little
pre race workout for them and all the other groups are taking

(01:45):
care of their stuff. So they're all, they're all
running right now as we're talking.
And I like to as much as possible go in sequential order.
But I thought it was interestingbecause the conversation we had
right before we hit record really like exemplified what a
high school coach like you want you want to be a high school
track coach. Be careful what you asked for
you guys because of scheduling and all that stuff you just got

(02:06):
through. I think you said in, in 12
years, in 14 days. 7 calendar days We had seven calendar days.
We hosted an invite and then we had two dual meets, Tuesday and
Thursday and then we had anotherinvite that we went to the next
Saturday. I.
Didn't even know you had that. There's meets.
Yeah, there's. Well, then we and we hosted both
of the duels too, so I was extratired.

(02:29):
So there I know there's coaches that are that would be just
rolling over talking about racing that much and it was not
my favorite thing to do, but theschedule was weird this year and
what we got to do so. It's interesting, you know, as I
do track clinics around the country and do a lot of hosting
and Q&A's and things like that, which has been a big blast for
me. One of the probably most common

(02:51):
questions from a high school coach, whether it's a high
school coach on the panel or a college coach, is, hey, we have
to do Tuesday, Thursday, dual meets and then invitationals.
How do you do that? Yeah, it's literally.
It's one of the most common questions a coach will ask.
And it's and it's also controversial, too. 100% Hey, I
I grew up in Alabama and we did it.

(03:11):
We were the Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday invite team and and we
did not do it correctly. We literally ran every race
every time. Like, yeah, yeah, it was.
Yeah, it was terrible, terrible.No, you can see it.
You could see it in our most recent do all that we had this
past Tuesday, like our some of our studs who are usually way up
were, were very much not up. They were, they were ready for a
break. So we took the next thing off.

(03:33):
And yeah, so hopefully, hopefully we're getting some
spirits back up here. I I think, you know, through the
Guild 1918 project and through track clinics and coaching
education, I think we're gettingbetter at not doing what, you
know, my coach did with me and that you run every race, every
meet. But I remember somewhere I
thought it was, I don't want to misquote somewhere the that was

(03:53):
the question at a track clinic. And and you know, the obvious
answer is, well, you know, mayberun them in off events, Maybe
don't run your you don't have torun your stud 2 Miller every
race, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
But the coach's rebuttal was that those Tuesday, Thursday
dual try meets counted for like their conference championship.
I was like, Oh well, that's a whole different can of.
Worms. There's some, there's some

(04:14):
leagues that don't count that, they just count their conference
meet, but ours does. So yeah, we just have to look at
how can we manage scoring enoughversus keeping kids fresh and
healthy. And I think we did the best job
we could and we're on our way so.
I thought coaching track was just, you know, you sent him on

(04:34):
for a few miles. I didn't know there's all this
component to it man. A little bit more stuff.
It is brother, it is. Well, Colin, let's let's learn
more stuff, man. I'm super excited.
You know what we do here and youknow, it's our mission that we
will continue to drive every Monday here in our original
content with our interviews withcoaches is to uplift and honor
what you do as a coach. And so I love learning journeys.

(04:56):
I love learning, you know, how track became part of your life?
How when did coaching like flip and was like, oh, wait a minute,
I mean, I could do that. Like that could be my career.
So I love learning all that. So Colin, my first question for
you is going to be where does track start for you, man?
Middle school, high school whereyou maybe you didn't even do
track, I don't know. Yeah, I'm in that bucket.
So I I'm pretty sure that you'renot going to have a person with

(05:17):
a similar story. OK, Challenge accepted.
I was homeschooled. Track and field wasn't an
option. Raised, born and raised in West
Michigan. I've been here my whole life and
there's some sports in West Michigan that are kind of strong
in the homeschool community. They do basketball really well.

(05:38):
I wasn't a basketball kid. I was a football kid.
And so when I was growing up, there was there was a handful of
homeschool football teams. And so I played football as my
first love, still love it and played from the only, the only
catch was I could only play through 11th grade.
So I played football 6th grade through 11th grade.

(06:02):
Wasn't very good. Realized as an adult that
distance running is probably where my skill set was, so I
should have run track if that would have been a possibility,
but it wasn't. Yeah.
So football player played offensive and defensive line and
just loved every bit of it. Yeah, it's my favorite thing in
the world. First of all, there's I'm

(06:24):
curious why only let's start with this.
Why only through 11th grade? Did you know it?
Loud. It's it's so it's how the MHSAA
works. It's kind of goofy, I think.
And I think football's the only sport where it's a problem
because of how playoff points work for the high schools.
So we could play against JV teams, but we couldn't schedule

(06:45):
against varsity teams. And then 12th graders don't need
to be playing JV, right? Right.
So because of how that works, you couldn't schedule varsity
games later on. We'll hit this.
Later on, there were more opportunities through a
different league. Yeah, when I was that age, it

(07:06):
was up until 10th or 11th grade,so.
And I've heard of homeschool kids that will play team sports
on the local high school, whatever high school they would
have. Gone in, but in different
states, that's a thing. In Michigan, it is not.
But you're saying, like, this was a group of homeschool kids
that made-up a football team, Correct.
Yeah. So you guys like it feels like
very Sandlot neighborhoods like you guys were like all right,

(07:29):
3:00 we all just meet and we. Played yeah, it was it was as
organized as you could be with the homeschool people and that's
the the the it's weird because the community is very like
individual and doing things our way that's probably the hardest
part of it like so they actuallydo basketball really well.
There's a there's a bunch of homeschool basketball teams that

(07:51):
are really established. And so with those leagues like,
yeah, it it, they do it pretty good.
But again, it's, it's, it's not the same experience, so.
Yeah, sure. That's interesting.
Cool. And you mentioned you kind of
said two things that didn't really line up for me.
You said you kind of maybe learnlater in life like, oh, maybe I

(08:13):
should have been a distance if I'd had the opportunity, I'd
been a distance shorter. But you said you played the
offense and defensive line, which, yeah, typical distance.
I mean, I'm not a fast person. I'm not a twitchy person, so I
was not big enough to really. I was the size of probably a
running back or a defensive back, but I did not have the
skills to do that. But I was willing to go get

(08:36):
buried every play, so I played defensive tackle most of the
time in kind of tried to make asbig a mess as possible so that
linebackers could do their thing.
Yeah, hey, I was an offensive lineman and wasn't very way
bigger than I was back in high school.
And just I think playing on the line, especially the offensive

(08:57):
line, but I'm biased, it it makes you a special person.
Like if you really get into it, it's a it's a selfless endeavor.
You learn. You learn how to just love being
on a team. And that's where I learned that
yes, yes, yes, yes. So what?
What is a guy who's homeschooled, who can't play
football this senior year? There is no track team.
What did you do something else senior year or what do you do?

(09:17):
No, I worked at a pizza place and got ready for college and
dual enrolled at Grand Rapids Community College with and some
math classes and graduated. And Trek.
So Trek is not in your mind, correct.
It's just another yeah, I've seen the Olympics or whatever.
Yeah. Well, yeah, I love the Olympics.
That's the that's the one thing like the Michael Johnson double

(09:41):
is like one of my childhood sports memories.
Yep. And so that's kind of that's
kind of like I was that was sweet and always loved the
Olympics. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's kind of where it all it started initially.
It is interesting, you know, people who are Live Today, you
know, we've seen Usain Bolt set the 200m world record, 100 and

(10:05):
things like that and the 400 record for Wade and those guys.
But that 200M Michael Johnson, for us who are of age to be able
to watch TV, it's a little bit like like, like other like kind
of natural disasters, like you remember where you were.
I, I think everybody who saw Michael Johnson set where in
1932, I can still remember. I, I, I remember almost no
stats. I still remember 1932 gold

(10:27):
shoes. I remember where I was, I was in
a bar having a beer because I just ran the corporate 5K in
Chicago and it just was, it's iconic.
It was iconic. Yeah.
So as you graduate, you're looking at college.
What are you, what are you thinking about being as an
adult? What are you thinking?
Like you want? To be a teacher.
So I came from a blue collar home.

(10:48):
My dad was a machinist and went to.
I ended up going to Grand Valleyand I didn't really know what I
wanted to do. I took some intro to machining
courses at GRCC. Ended up transferring to Grand
Valley into the engineering program and spent a few too many

(11:09):
years doing that because I wasn't a great student at first,
but I figured it out. Graduated.
No, no sports. You're not playing on the club,
club, football team or anything.You're just.
You played, played pick up stuffwith friends as much as
possible, Yeah. Started distance running well,
actually, So back it up. In high school, I started

(11:30):
running a little bit 5K stuff with my dad.
There was a new football coach that was hired and everybody
knew that he likes to run people.
And so that was like, you've gotto, you have to get ready for
this. And so we started, I started
going out. He runs for that.
He was a, he was a runner cross country in high school and you

(11:51):
know, Rd. racing 5 KS and stuff is an adult.
So that's where I got that from a little bit.
But yeah, I worked at a I workedat a pizza place in high school
and gained a little bit of too much weight.
Started running as a way to losethat weight in college,
Realized, oh, this is fun. I like this.
I'm better at it than I was at other stuff.

(12:12):
Scratch is the competitive itch.And yeah, started that became
like my primary hobby at that point.
So OK, that that's a good term hobby.
So running, which you know, the,the hobby of running is not
track and field. It's it's, you know, there's,
there's some parallels, but it'snot the same.
You end up graduating from GrandValley, so you're a Laker.

(12:33):
With a Laker, which is great. You know what a great track
program they have. Oh yeah, that's ironic.
Yeah, yeah. That's so funny.
Yeah. If you would have told me, you
know, we're. Hey, am I having you on the
podcast? You're like, great.
You know, I'd be like, hey, so where'd you go to school?
Grand Valley? I'm like, oh, wow, you must have
been pretty good, you know, immediately you must have been
pretty good because they're good, you know?
Yeah. OK, that's so funny.
All right, so you you graduate with an engineering degree.

(12:54):
Yep. Mechanical engineering.
Yep. Wow.
Yeah. OK.
So you're going to go on to, I mean engineering?
And I worked as I started interning junior year at a
machine automated machine designer, got hired when I
graduated and it was a yeah, mechanical engineer primarily in
automated machine design for a few years.

(13:17):
So what did somebody do with that major when they graduate?
What? Do you?
You can do a lot. There's a lot of stuff.
Mechanical engineering can bringyou a lot of places, lots of
sitting behind a computer drawing things in CAD.
So our our wheelhouse was makingmachines that make stuff.
So think of, think of you've ever seen videos of yellow

(13:39):
robots putting cars together, that kind of stuff.
OK. So you know, we're manufacturer,
so we don't necessarily, we do have some computer robot welding
and robot building and things like that.
In fact, all of our hurdles, hurdles are done on this robot
welder, which is just crazy, crazy looking out there.
So we have some of that. Yeah.
OK, so those. Are those are that stuff?
That's that's what I, that's what I basically the kind of

(14:01):
stuff I worked on. Cool.
OK, so that that seems kind of cool.
Yep, it was fun. OK, Good job.
But we're not doing that anymore.
So we'll get and we'll get back to.
We'll get to that later. Yeah.
Well, OK, so you're you're you graduated in engineering.
You're you're you actually. Did you say you went into work
or did you go to grad school? I'm sorry I missed that.
Part No no. Grad school was hired.
Hired by the company that I interned with on graduation and

(14:23):
I was there for a few years. Ended up making a few career
moves trying to find the right fit based on hours and and
products and location, stuff like that.
OK, That's interesting to me because like I'm a guy who when
I got into coaching, I in 10 years of coaching, I went to

(14:46):
five different institutions because I was searching for
something. So when you said you were
searching for what? What like the, the, the, the
easy question is to say, what were you searching for?
And I don't mean like, oh, you know, a bigger paycheck or like
you had to be looking. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm
saying. There had to be something.
You're like, I'm just not satisfied with this.
So let me try over here. What was can you think about

(15:06):
think about that time Like what were you?
Searching for I was looking for I'm a people person.
I realized that little later in life, but I I like people and
the work I did was fun. There were a lot of cool
projects. I got to work on a customer in
particular that I wish I could mention here, but signed an NDA
at some point and probably it's not working.

(15:28):
Bring that out. It's not.
Working. It was fun work, but like the
designing a machine that puts together another bracket for a
Ford truck that I'm never going to see and the manufacturing
industry I've got, I've got a love hate relationship with it.
I love making things, I love designing things, I love
tinkering. But like consumerism is not

(15:52):
exactly my thing. And eventually, and this is down
the road, but eventually it led me to teaching.
So I teach manufacturing and engineering now.
Really. Yeah.
So, OK, the reason I asked that question about what you're
searching for is because you have you had to be continue

(16:13):
working towards it. And I wondered if it had to do
something with people and mentioned that.
So, so teaching people, I mean, that makes complete sense.
Yeah. And you said you kind of came to
that later in life, like as far as like the the people side.
Yes, yeah, I didn't realize. I think I realized, like I
realized probably in my late 20sthat, you know, people mean a
lot to me, so. That's cool, man.

(16:38):
Boy, you were, you were born to be a coach and you just didn't
know it at that point, you know?Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, man. So OK, you're working.
You're you're searching for something.
You're searching for some kind of almost like a, you know, I
don't wanna put words in your mouth, but like a connection is
really what you're that's. Probably a good way to describe
it. Yeah.
You know, it's, it's interesting.
I think, I think, and this is the whole like the homeschool
thing, like I loved being on a team, but the community aspect

(17:00):
is lacking. Like I'm very close with my
family, but the broader community part is like I was
searching for that my whole life.
Yeah, that's because. We're not connected to people
who are proud of being a part ofthe same thing together.
You said you came to that later in life, so maybe you didn't
even couldn't even realize maybeit was happening while it was

(17:23):
happening. Did you struggle with that?
Because yeah, I, I mean, you think about homeschooling of
like, you know, my kids go to school, public school.
It's like, you know, there's 30 kids all around and there's, you
know, good kids, bad kids. You know, they're they're
interacting with everything and homeschooling you're and listen,
you're brothers and sisters or anything.
Yeah, I've got six siblings and so we're we're close.
Calling you had you had your ownclassroom.

(17:43):
Yeah, it's true. Well, we're all spread apart and
but so I'm very close with my family but still like the.
Family that's different from a stranger you meet at the the
mall or at the school or down the down the road.
Yeah, yeah. Being united, being united under
like a specific community was like, it's what I wanted for a

(18:07):
very long time. Did you find a little bit of
that in the football team? Yeah, I loved.
Yes. I think I found that there.
Like I said, I wasn't very good,but I loved everything about it.
So a lot of people hate practicelike they just want to go play.
But I was like practice sign me up, practice cancelled.
Worst day ever. Love my teammates, just want to
be around it all the all the time.
What about college? Because now you are in a

(18:28):
classroom of 200. I started, yes, I started
finding some of that there in college.
I was, I was too busy not failing to, I think.
Appreciate it though. OK, I get that.
Yeah, sure, sure, sure. That makes sense.
So this search, I love that. I mean, that's just, I mean,
again, the epitome of a coach isthe people and the kids that you

(18:51):
connect with and even your connection amongst peers.
So I love, love this, this journey you're taking us
through. So you start leading into
teaching. So now how did?
How did you get there though? Because, well, that's that's we
should probably talk about that later.
OK, OK, So when I was actually in college, I started coach I
coached football for the team I played for for about I think it

(19:15):
was almost 10 years, I think 9 years the.
The home school. Yeah, so a guy at Church of like
my dad's age, family friend knewhim really well.
He knew I played and he asked me.
He was a coach of a 5th and 6th grade team at the time.
And so he asked me. I think I was.
I think I was 20, 19 or 20. He asked me if I want to start

(19:39):
coach with coaching with him because he just needed an
assistant. So I was like, absolutely.
And started coaching youth football.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was 20 years old.
It's, you know, at some point, Colin, this is a track and field
podcast. So we do get there.
Look at there, we'll get there. So that was part of I think.

(20:01):
If I had to guess, a little bit of like seeds of your searching
for people because you had that during college.
And then you go into a much more.
I love how you put that about, you know, making another robot
that makes this widget on this one truck that, you know, I know
someone's driving. That's great.
And probably driving their kids to to practice or whatever.
That's awesome. But it's hard.
It's several levels removed fromthat robot you're working on.
Yeah. So this coaching this youth

(20:23):
football team was kind of maybe a little bit of the seeds being
planted of like, oh, OK. I like being around and seeing.
Kids, Yeah. OK, so where do we go from
there? So I was with them, it was what
the West Michigan Christian Patriots was the team and we I
was there for. I went from 5th and 6th grade
team all the way up to the high school team.

(20:45):
Ended up being their head coach for a little bit at the end, I
think, I think it was the year 9and good.
It was fun, good times. But then we had a me and my wife
had a baby and he was I think one or two in between that and
work and everything. It was just, you know, same

(21:08):
story from a lot of coaches, so.A lot of people, not just
coaches in that one, yeah, yeah.Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, put that away for a bitand just focused on family and
work. I don't know if I don't know
very much about homeschooling atall at all.
Did you homeschool your kid or if you have.
No, he's, he's public school, Yeah.

(21:30):
Did you do that because of the experience that you had?
Yeah. Not that your experience was
negative necessarily. But no, and that's the that's
the crazy thing because like you're, you can't, you can't.
I wish some things were different, but you can't really
change things like what your experiences make it who you are,
Right, Right. So do I wish I had some more
opportunities when I was that age?

(21:51):
Absolutely. Can I control that?
No. And I am who I am today because
of the stuff we did so. Yeah, you know.
Yeah, so Connor. Connor and Ivy are both
Granville Public. Oh.
Nice. I love that.
You know, I'm a huge Vanilla Icefan.
And one of his very famous sayings only for us fans.
No one else knows. The saying is who we are is who

(22:13):
we were is is who. Gosh, I, you know, I think I
actually have it in my phone. It's it's exactly what you just
said there about who we are is we are who we are because of who
we were. So this is how much a dork I am.
I literally have that quote right here in my phone, in my
photos. I kept it.
We are who we are because of whowe were.
So that's exactly right. Who we've been in the past is
what makes us up to who we are today.

(22:33):
And well, I really like who I amtoday.
So even all the bad things of who I was, you know, that
happened and things like that, I'm glad they happened and
wouldn't wouldn't change a thing.
So I love that, and that's very cool.
Well having a child will change your life pretty drastically as
well, right? Yep.
Yeah. So your father, you're

(22:54):
searching. You're you're coaching.
Where? Where do we keep going?
Keep us moving forward here? Yeah.
So in 2019, one of the jobs I ended up in was it was another
machine design house, but it wasa smaller, smaller company,
probably 10 people really specialized and it was close to

(23:17):
home. And I ended up there.
And then I got laid off from there about a year and a half in
because the the economy tanked at that point for a little bit.
And so that industry didn't do well for a little bit.
And I was in a basically a I wasin a position of what's the

(23:42):
word, I was expendable. Yeah, I was for them.
So not in a bad way, just like they they couldn't, they
couldn't afford me. Yeah.
So I got laid off. And at this time, I knew I
wanted to get out of manufacturing if possible.
I didn't know what what it was that I could do next.
I just knew that I wanted to take life somewhere else.

(24:04):
And that's when and at this point, like we're way past
football, but I knew I wanted tocoach.
Still running is huge and I've best become educated in track
and college track and pro track.Like basically pro track became

(24:25):
like bigger to me than than Pro Football to watch really Diamond
League marathons and everything.So I became a bigger fan of that
sport during this entire time and was interested in coming a
distance coach because to, to me, like, I think one thing I

(24:47):
learned in football is if you'relike a, if you're, if you're a
good coach, I really believe youcan pick up almost any position.
I know there's a lot of, there'sa lot of coaches out there who
think, oh, you need experience in the event you need.
You can't, you can't coach throws unless you were thrower.
You can't coach jumps unless youwere jumper, whatever.

(25:07):
I think we've seen enough coaches that are really
successful that if you're if you're a good coach.
Yeah, you can. Like at some point I had to
coach defensive backs because I had to, right?
I didn't play defensive back. I played deep in tackle, right?
Anyway, so when I was laid off looking through all these job
application, all these job positions, and at that point

(25:30):
Byron Center needed a track coach and I had no idea what the
depth of need was. I didn't know if I was an
assistant or what. I applied for it.
This is in February and the season starts in March.
And a week before the season starts I get called in for an

(25:52):
interview. I have some coaching experience.
I had no idea if that was going to get me anything or not.
And this is this is where the story gets kind of crazy because
they need boys and girls head coach, the previous coach, and I
think there were a few assistants.
They basically resigned after the previous season.

(26:13):
The only person they had was a throwing coach who was one of my
assistants and one of my best friends.
Now, Aaron, I'd And so Aaron spends like an entire winter
thinking that, you know, hey, have you guys called anybody
yet? You got a coach yet?
You got a head coach yet? Anything going on?
Aaron was going on vacation and in the end of February thinking
he was going to have to come back and become a head coach,

(26:36):
which was not what he was interested in at at that point
anyway. So I interview, they don't have
a lot of, I don't think they have anybody.
You're like really, really qualified for it.
They had, they interviewed me and another guy who had some
track experience. I believe he went to Grand

(26:58):
Valley actually, he's in the east side of Michigan, had some
high school coaching experience,but he didn't want to be head
coach. So he's got track experience,
but he doesn't want to be head coach.
And so they offered me that job,which I was at that point
completely unqualified for but knew how to learn things on the
spot. I'm really excited about it.

(27:22):
And they called me and offered me the job like 3 days before
the season started. OK, lot to unpack here.
Yeah, a lot to unpack there. Just in that, OK, first of all,
I just want to say thank you foryour openness and authenticity
regarding being laid off. And the reason I say that is
because I've learned actually through the podcast here that,

(27:43):
you know, it is good when we show that bad things have
happened to us and we have come through the other side.
I'm reminded of Karen Dennis, now retired, just got into the
Drake Relays Hall of Fame. She was on the show and she goes
from UNLV to Ohio State and, andI asked what I thought was a

(28:04):
pretty softball question like, oh, well, why you know, why'd
you go from UNLV to Ohio State? You know, it's a pretty like,
right. And she goes, well Mike, I was
fired and I was like, I was like, whoa.
I was like, and you know, you know, from our pre interviews,
you know, kind of pull the curtain back here.
If you guys and gals that are listening, they get to tell the
story the way they want to tell it.
There's no requirements. I, I do 0 research.
So I know none of that's going on here with Colin.

(28:26):
This is all new to me as well. And so with Karen, I had no
clue. I, you know, she just told me
she went to Ohio State and I'm like, OK.
And so I asked her. I was like, Karen, I was like,
you know, you get to tell the story how you wanted to say it,
like, and you openly volunteeredthat, you know, you were fired.
And she talked to us about why and all that kind of stuff.
And I asked her, I asked her why, why did you know you could
have not said that? You know, you could have just

(28:47):
been like, well, Mike, I'm from the Midwest and it's Ohio State,
right? And all that kind of stuff.
And she's like, you know, it's important, you know, as a coach
of young people, it's important for me to show other people
that, you know, sometimes bad things happen to you because of
what you do and sometimes without any control.
And you can still bounce back from it.
So now anytime someone is so open and authentic like that to
me, I just want to say bravo because, you know, there are

(29:08):
people out there that will go through that.
They're they don't know it rightnow.
You're listening and you're going to get laid off.
You're going to get fired unjustly and maybe justly
sometimes. And it's not the end of the
world. Right.
Yeah. Actually, maybe the better way
of saying that is you get to choose if it's the end of the
world or not. Meaning like you can either
wallow and pity yourself and I'msure it may be for mental

(29:30):
health, maybe that's good for some time period, a 24 hour time
period, right? Or something like that.
But you get to make the decisionto get back on your feet and and
get back to it. And obviously you did that here,
Colin. OK, so first of all, just want
to say thanks for for being so open and authentic there.
Now the audacity that you get hired.
I know it is. That's a good way to say it.
It's crazy. So it's interesting because, you

(29:53):
know, you know, this welcome, I live my life on Twitter, right?
And so I think literally just this past weekend between
flights and hotels, I think I saw a tweet where it was like,
you know, how dare you coaches and they were blaming high
school coaches. And I don't like when we
necessarily pick high school versus college because trust me,
there's some college side to this as well that, you know,

(30:14):
you're only there for the paycheck.
You're only there, you don't do anything to learn your event and
things like that. And then someone will pipe in
and say, well, these a DS have to stop hiring people who have
no experience and blah, blah. And it's like, well, you know,
first of all, AD has a pool of applicants that may only be two
people from crying out loud. On the other side of that, like
I get to hire my own coaches andwhen I hire something like I
don't get a huge stack, yeah, I get I get like I whenever I put

(30:37):
that posting out there and I getwho I get and it is what it.
Is I. You pray that you get people
with experience. Fish when specifically high
school because it's usually regionalized for their hiring
right when they put out an assistant coach or head coach
for track and field. I wish there was 100 awesome
track coaches playing. You know, sorry, sometimes not

(30:57):
sometimes maybe every high school in some form or fashion
or some time frame you got to teach someone to be a coach.
They've never coached before andyou got to all right, come be my
assistant. I'll show you what it means to
coach high jump and go coaching head and all that kind of stuff.
So, but what's interesting to meabout you is so you knew kind of
like, OK, I like this coaching thing.
You've done the football coaching stuff and.

(31:19):
You. I loved it.
I wanted to get back into it andI wasn't sure how and but yeah,
we figured it out. And I've said this a lot that,
you know, this is episode 300 and something.
So I've done this 300 plus timesand I'll say that there's no one
like path to coaching, like there's so many different paths.
But I do at some point at like 300, I'm thinking like, OK,
well, you know, Collins is goingto be just like maybe guest #100

(31:41):
or something. I don't think.
And you know, my memory is not great.
And again, you could forgive me for 300 different interviews.
I'm not sure. This feels like the first time a
kind of a track fan became a coach.
Usually we become track fans like maybe through our
athleticism or, oh, I became a coach and then I kind of started
liking this. You were like this.
This track stuff is kind of cool, man.

(32:02):
The marathons and diamond leagues and I should go coach
it. That's amazing.
So what do you, you know, knowing you now, you're
obviously a very responsible adult who, you know, I, I know
what's in front of me. I don't want to injure the kids
and, you know, harm them and things like that.
So what did you they call you upand say, hey, all right, man,

(32:24):
You're, you're the best we got Colin.
For better or worse. For better or worse, brother.
Like what's the first thing you do?
Like, do you call someone you know?
Do you like Miele? Research, coaching, education?
You go get a book. What's like the first?
Like, OK, in a week these kids are going to be in front of me.

(32:44):
What do I do here? Well, so thankfully we had a
throwing coach, so check, OK. So, so that gave you so he knew
like, hey, we go to these meets.This is how we get to the.
Meets so he I. Get some blocking.
Attachments. Yeah, there was a lot in the
first two years that I that Aaron pulled me through as far

(33:05):
as like some of the mechanics, like cuz like through running
self trained, like I got deep into it enough that like, you
know, Jack Daniels, all the I was, I was getting pretty deep
into training. So like the the training part
for distance runners is it's notthat difficult.
Like if you know how to coach, that's pretty, that's pretty

(33:25):
easy. No, I don't wanna say easy.
It's you can learn it. So I was I was on I was good
there. Yeah, yeah.
But then like the other guy thatwas hired did our sprints and
jumps, the. The guy who had experience but
didn't want to be the head coach.
Yeah, OK, So he he took sprints and jumps.
And so it was the three of us for that year.

(33:47):
And yeah, I was it was just a crash course in in how does the
mechanics of how Michigan high school track worked you leaned?
On Aaron and your other coach ordid you like, Hey, I'm I'm the
head coach, so guys, you listen to me.
No, no, I am. I am a collaborative person.
So in the, in the, and this career that I formerly had, like

(34:11):
it's all team based like like when we're designing a machine,
you got the mechanical designer,you got the electrician, you've
got the electrical engineer, you've got the computer
engineer, you've got your plumbers.
And it is a team effort and so. And you were a football,
football lineman. So you you I mean there is no.
Humility is built. In Yeah, OK, I.
Wasn't one of those receivers ordefensive backs or anything,

(34:33):
right? Exactly.
It might be a different, might be different story, but no.
So it was leaning on them for their expertise.
And that's how I want to do it anyway.
Like I don't want to micromanagemy Sprint coach now.
He does a good job. I'm going to let him.
We're going to talk about lineups and if we have a kid who
fits in multiple places. And right now we have a few of
those, like we put our heads together and figure out what we

(34:54):
got to do. But I don't need to tell.
I don't need to manage his workouts.
He's got it under control. And that was the attitude I had
then. And thankfully they were, they
knew what they were doing. But yeah, just like the
mechanics of registering for meets, which meets, just all
that stuff, communicating in theschool.

(35:15):
We didn't have an AD at that time.
The previous AD had retired. There was an interim who was a
guy. So did you?
Probably my age. Do you apply?
Do you apply for that job too? I mean, why not?
Why not? Why not?
No, I'm not interested in that one.
Thank you. But yeah, so, and I think that's
that's part of why I got the jobis like the interim AD is like
we we're not going to coach, we're not going to coach.

(35:37):
Then he's going to be in there running it and he doesn't want
that. So we'll hire this guy, right?
So yeah, it was just just a huge, huge, huge learning curve.
Are you so just remembering yourbackground is in engineering and
you brought up, you know, very team based, so like scrums and
Six Sigma and kind of that kind of stuff.

(35:57):
Did you bring that to like your role as the head coach?
Like were you? Very aware as we are as
organized as possible, we have a.
Spreadsheet. Yeah, Yeah.
There we go. We grew into it, you know, the
first year was a lot of just talking back and forth, not a,
not a ton of electronic stuff yet, but now it is.
It is all about organization, making sure that we know what,

(36:20):
what's going like. We all know what's going on.
I try to keep communication flowing, have a record of
everything so people aren't surprised, right?
There's no, there's nothing worse than being surprised by
something, right? So I want to make sure that all
that information is there and people know what's going on.
In this first year, when you go to meets, are you picking the
brain of other coaches Like you're, you know, you guys are

(36:42):
doing your splits for your two milers?
You're like, hey man, So what are you doing over there?
Not a ton. Like I said, I was fairly
confident in distance training at that point.
The what the So if we back up a second, the one event I didn't
mention that we had covered was pole vault.

(37:02):
So I guess what event I got to learn how to coach my first
year. Oh wait, wait, I must have
misheard you. It was an event.
You did not have cover. Did not have cover.
Oh, I thought you said you did have cover.
I thought you're gonna have somewiser.
Nope. Oh, bro, maybe one of the.
You know, I think it'll. Yeah, but.
And I never want to like, you know.
Oh, this event's harder to coachyou, but I mean, it's especially

(37:25):
for a guy who's never I. Mean I would say it's not hard
to coach. It is that's probably hard to
coach. I shouldn't say that it is time
intensive if you. Safety is a lot, right?
Safety, I think. I disagree with the people who
think that pole vault's unsafe, I think.
No, no, it's not unsafe if it's coached or done well, but you
know, you're putting a kid 10 feet in the air, falling from 10

(37:47):
feet can hurt them. That's true.
You send your distance runner off for a 10 Miller.
Just I'm doing some kind of crazy or 10 Miller for a high
schooler. Maybe.
You know they may, if you keep doing that, get a stress
fracture, maybe, you know, it's but it's less likely they're
going to get injured where pole vaulter has a little bit higher.
Yeah, there's risk there, but again, like if we're, if we're,

(38:10):
if we're following the rules andbeing safe, it's not.
There are some people who think that it shouldn't even be a
sport. There's.
Wrong. There's wrong.
They're wrong. Yeah, so I get, but yeah.
I appreciate the distance guy here, by the way, not having
that attitude. You know, I don't want to pick
up my distance coaches, but you easily could have been like, hey
guys, we're just I think. That there are there are some

(38:30):
distance coaches who need to wake up a little.
Bit oh boy, I did not say that guy that was so his e-mail
address is CII. Think there are some distance
coaches who could who could learn from the other events?
OK. All right, well, they will do
Guild 1918 project, a little plug there.
Yeah. All right.
So. So you have to do the pole vault

(38:50):
too. Yeah.
So talk to me about that, because that would that would
intimidate me that that's weird that I never coached.
I mean, it was a lot of researching, a lot of crash
course, like OK, starting groundlevel.
Not not a great adjective to usewith pole vaulting.
Crash course. That's funny, but no, it was, it

(39:12):
was yeah, started from the bottom up and try to have a plan
so that like we get a practice 2, two days a week and like I.
I I feel like I could accidentally coach a distance
runner. Not not well, but like I could,
you know, I know, like if I was just totally ignorant, I would
literally just like, Hey, let's just run like 8 miles a day.
I don't know that probably make you better as a 2 Miller, you
know, and they'll get better. They won't be as good as they

(39:33):
could be, but they'll get betterpole vaulting.
And you know, you watch the Olympics and your fans a Diamond
League, So you saw it. But there's still like, you
don't know how to bend a pole orshould you even bend a pole with
a beginner? You know, there's no, and that
was, so the talking to people was that event that wasn't the
one where I went. And there's, there's some
freaking good pole vault coachesaround here.

(39:54):
And so had some conversations and I could, I got to the point
where I could get, I could get girls to like 8 feet and I could
get guys to about 11-6, maybe 12feet.
But with the amount of time I had available, that was a pretty
hard cap. And that's where I want to say
it's not that it's hard, it's that it's.

(40:16):
You have to spend a lot of time in video dissecting stuff,
really breaking it down with your kids.
And as a head coach, there just wasn't that time.
Yeah. So thankfully, a few years ago I
found a pole vault coach and we're set there now.
Nice, nice nice. Thankfully.
What what AI mean? Someone who has a background in

(40:41):
track and field, Like if you'd run track in high school or not
even college, but you know, justin high school, you know,
stepping onto the track to coachis still extremely hard.
Even if you were a hurdler, likeagain, you don't be a great
hurdle. Even if you're hurdler, you're
like, okay, well, I know, like, you know, I didn't three-step in
high school, but I know you're supposed to three-step.
I got to figure out how to coachthat, you know, for you to just
come from this, like, I wonder if it's a little bit like, I

(41:05):
wonder if it's advantageous for you because that means you also
didn't come with a lot of bad habits that we pick up as
athletes and things like that. Yeah, but I wonder how many.
For my first vaulters, I really wonder how many bad habits I
gave them. It was probably a lot.
Did your, you know, engineering's a lot of angles,
math, things like that did? Yeah, so that helped a little
bit like being able to understand geometry and force in

(41:26):
general. Like it like I there are a lot
of I have a biomedical minor, soI had to take bio mechanics.
And so there's there's a there Ihad a leg up a little bit in
that like a lot of the words I recognized and techniques like
wasn't totally foreign, but still putting into practice and
and figuring out, OK, how come Ican't get this kid to do this

(41:50):
thing That was the. Hard.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was was this the 2020
season? So 2019, 2020 was wiped out by
COVID. In Michigan, what was the first
year though 2019? 2019 Spring 2019 So.
Yeah, and this isn't a great question because 2020 is next.
What I want to ask is what you don't get the degrees and jobs

(42:14):
and experiences you had without being a learner.
You don't get through home school probably without being a
learner because you don't have anybody else to rely on, right?
Right. A lot of figuring it out.
Yeah, yeah. So I'm ask the question, but
it's not a great question because 2020 happens.
My question is, what was the thing that you improved the most
in that second year? Like I feel like you're kind of
guy who makes a lot of leaps andbounds there.

(42:35):
I wondered if there's like one thing of like, oh, you know, my
second year, you know what I nailed?
I nailed the organization of oh,the distance runners and pole
vaulters or I nailed the organization of how we get the
meats in the warm up and things like that.
But you went into 2020, which means you've had.
More Yeah, we that we, we got better.
We started. The fact of the matter is, is
our numbers went up so we had a bigger team.

(42:57):
Are you teaching at the school at this point?
Not quite yet. That comes a little later.
So how did you do that then? Because you're not in the
hallways. No.
So I got a job, probably my mostfulfilling engineering job.
I got a job with a commercial mechanical service company, so
designing, designing like heating and ventilation for

(43:19):
commercial buildings. And they, I told them when I got
hired, hey, I also got this job and I really want to do this.
So will you guys make it work ifyou hire me?
And they're like, Yep, go for it.
And they, so I had a lot of, they gave me a lot of
flexibility, a lot of, a lot of making up work at night and on
weekends. Yeah.

(43:40):
So I wasn't in the hallways. I think, yeah, kids just saw a
little bit of a change in the team.
And we had a pretty solid middleschool program.
So a lot of always had a ton of freshmen coming out huge.
And yeah. So we hired, hired 2 more people

(44:02):
for the next year. So I had a few more assistants
and then we had our, we had fourdays of practice and we were
starting to smooth out communication and smooth out
training details and stuff. And then the funny part is, is I
was going to take the next week off because our we had a baby do

(44:24):
good time for it. Very good time for it.
Oh yeah. Track season, baby do.
And going to go run the Boston Marathon as well to get you.
And yeah, yeah. Oh, hold on now.
I now I feel like I disrespectedyou because I because I
basically called you a hobby jogger because I was like, you
know, I'll run into hobby. You know, that's different.
I'm not offended by that statement, but you.

(44:45):
Qualify for Boston, though, that's.
A yeah, bro yeah. So I ran it in 2017 and was
going to run it in 2020. Anyway, we've got what boarding
to practice in. No, hold on.
You don't get to just I get to ask the questions.
What? What's your PR in the marathon?
24432. Dude, for a kid who had no

(45:07):
experience, he didn't run cross.Country.
I probably should have run crosscountry and track, that's the
thing. You did nail that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's we're that's a no
content, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow, bro. Yeah, That's crazy.
I mean, you just have no background.
I mean, this is just like, that makes me feel like people are
just walking out right here outside this window that, you

(45:27):
know, if they trained, they'd bea 24 like.
I think, well, I believe that because.
No one would have looked at you and thought that.
No, probably not. Yeah, I think that's the case
though. I really believe that like that
more people like I've been. I was disgusted with the
American distance running thing until very recently because.
It's like there's no. There's no we're, we're, we're

(45:48):
getting there. Like Grant and Grant and Cole
are doing some good work. Yeah.
So. We won a couple of gold medals,
Yeah, we won the steeple or do amedal in the steeple.
Yeah, you don't do that. But for too long, like American
marathoning was not as it shouldhave been So.
Wow, OK, keep going. Sorry.
I just that that floored me cuz yeah, cuz I'm the kind of guy

(46:08):
that I want to run a marathon. So I can say that I ran a
marathon. Mine would be like 6 hours or
something. I actually.
Fine, that's fine with me. Go do it.
I'm going to say I set out a plan that that's a plan's a long
word there for what I did. I thought it'd be so cool.
I looked up what marathon gives the biggest participant, you
know, finisher medal. Yeah.

(46:28):
And and there's a marathon Little Rock that gives out like
that's our thing, that they giveout the biggest.
And it's like, like you get after we get done, you get a
Google Little Rock marathon participation.
It's like it's, it puts Flavor Flav to shame on, on how big it
is, right? And then I tried to run in my
knees said no, bro, this, this not going to happen.
So I started thinking like, can I walk it?
But they have a cap at like 8 hours.

(46:49):
And I was like, I was like, I can walk.
I could probably get to an 18 minute, you know, per pace mile
maybe. And that wouldn't have done it.
So, so I'll never run the marathon.
That's basically what this goes down to.
So I'm amazed at people, even though I'm not a distance guy, I
am. And you know, marathoning as a,
as a participation finisher ideais a little controversial to
people who actually run fast as well.

(47:10):
Like, dude, you're not racing, you're just it's an event.
It's. Yeah, but I think.
It's. I think it's good for people and
it also like what the I don't know what the I'm OK calling
them snobs. What the snobs I don't realize
is that those people subsidized our hobby.
That's a good point, right? We're not gonna have marathon,
we're not gonna have a lot of five KS and a lot of marathons

(47:32):
if people don't want to just go do it right.
So there's no, there's no point in complaining about that.
That's a good point. Yeah.
All right, dude, that's cool. 240 marathon, 240 marathoner is
that's fascinating. I love that that's the kind of
hat I would wear. I'd just wear 240 and they're.
Like, well, there's always someone faster if there's always
some. My friends are all faster than
me so. But yeah, but still two 40s,

(47:54):
that's amazing. Actually, if you'd have told me
350, like I'd be like, you broke4.
Like that's that's amazing. You know that is amazing.
I love people who do that too. When you started, when you
started out by saying two, I waslike, holy crap dude, you've
been in the 2 range. That's a whole different world.
OK, keep us moving forward. So things are getting better.
You're about to take a week off getting ready to run Boston.

(48:14):
And then so it's the Thursday ofour first of the first week of
the second season and that's when the hammer drops and it's
weird, really weird. So we go, we go to the hospital
on Friday for AC section. And that was a bizarre
experience, like being the only visitors in the hospital were

(48:35):
the dads in the maternity ward. Wow, it was, it was weird.
Usually, usually hospitals are like crazy busy.
There's people everywhere. No, it was, it was a ghost town.
It was very. Barbie apocalypse.
Yeah, that's. What it felt like you like we
didn't know what's going on, like scared to touch stuff.
It was. Yeah, yeah, Right, right, right,
right. At one of the most happiest
times in your life, you're having a baby.

(48:56):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, the I, so the, the
ironic part and I give advice tonew parents now, like be
comfortable saying don't visit us because the recovery from
that one was so much better for my wife and they're recovering
from the other ones. Because no one got to visit.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
That's funny. Yeah.
Yeah, that's true. It's probably really true,

(49:17):
actually. Yeah.
Wow. So did Boston get cancelled that
year? It did.
OK. Yeah.
So the world, I mean, I always say the world stopped that day.
It really did. Yep, it did.
Wow. And you remember.
I remember we got the like you saw on like Twitter and on Let's
Run NCAA Indoors gets cancelled and that was weird.
I was there and. And the week before, one of my

(49:41):
coworkers was like, you think we're gonna start getting
quarantined? And I was like, no way.
And then, yeah, the next week wedidn't see each other again for
a few months. Wow.
I remember when the NBA cancelled like that Wednesday
night, I was like, it's real because that's millions of
dollars We're talking about people.
We ain't stopping for nothing ifit ain't serious.
And then, yeah, I think that Thursday is when I was in

(50:04):
Albuquerque for division ones. And it's like, all right, well,
Yep, go home. I was like, Oh my God.
I went back to my hotel room andI I tried to become viral.
I said, hey, let's make this thenext Internet challenge.
And I just, it was a video of mejust washing hands.
I didn't, I don't even think we were really telling people to
wash hands at that point. But I was like, we probably
should wash hands. It didn't go viral.
But yeah. So what do you do?

(50:29):
You're so new to this. Like, does this really pull on
your heart straight? Like, does it really?
Is it disappointing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was disappointing.
But it, I mean, is what it is. I'm, I'm kind.
I try to like in general, I try to not complain about stuff and
just OK, this is this is what we're given.
So we're gonna, we gotta do whatwe gotta do.

(50:50):
And it's. Yeah, not having that season
sucked. It was, it wasn't, it wasn't
fair. Yeah.
But we got through it. And, you know, we rolled into
the next season and started doing like some of the
improvements back to the original, original question.
We started doing workouts in thehallways in the offseason,
started participating a little more.
So Michigan has not an official indoor season, but it has a club

(51:14):
scene. Yeah.
Mitts. So it started.
Yeah. Mitts MITS Mitts Michigan indoor
track series started signing kids up for that.
Had they done this before? Yeah, a few here and there like
they would they said like the previous coach, I think he
brought a few kids and he would tell them what the stuff was,
but he didn't make it real organized to where as I started,

(51:35):
you know, I wanted track. So if we can go go race, let's
go do it. And yeah, didn't really make it
a really real official thing, but I was like, hey, do you want
to go do this? You want to go do this, you want
to go race. And so we would go to the
primarily the Grand Grand Valleyhas five meets that they host
and we would go there. And so that was one of the next
steps we took was actually turning kids who they did track

(52:02):
into track kids. So that was probably one of the
next steps. Explain what that means to you.
That that's interesting. I like this.
Well, it's a, it's a kid who, you know, a football player is a
football player, a volleyball player is a volleyball.
They, they had, they, that's their thing.
They do that. Basketball players, they play
for 50 club teams and they're always in the gym.
But we didn't have a culture of track athletes where that's

(52:27):
their main sport and that's what, you know, what, they also
play football or they also do something else in the winter.
But no, track is their thing. And so slowly we started getting
the hooks into kids and making that happen.
So it means like it's more in it's important to them, yes, you
know, if I go out and I don't dowell, well, who care?

(52:48):
I'm just here to I'm on the track team because my my
girlfriend's on the track team or whatever versus oh man, I had
a bad race coach. What what happened?
What do we do? What do we need to change?
Like this is this is my thing. My identity is I am a track
athlete, not just on the team. One of the stories that Aaron
tells is there was a there was aconference meet.
I don't know if it was the year before or two years before I

(53:09):
started where like, you know, kids would just dip out when
their event was done and it would get it would got to the
end where they had to like scramble to put a 4 by 4 on the
on the track because OK, we got a distance runner left.
We have a sprinter left, we havea discus thrower.
Who else can we put on for the 4by 4?

(53:29):
And that's just, I mean, you know, track that that's
depressing. That should that's not how it
should be. And now we're at the point where
our 4x4 team went Allstate last year, and I think currently I
think they're ranked #3 in Division One in Michigan.
So it went from being the last thing anybody wanted to do to

(53:49):
that is you know what, the 400 and the 4 by 4 is our favorite
stuff. Yeah, you know, I asked you
earlier because you said you hadyou increased your team roster
and so I go, how did you do that?
Because it's, yeah, every high school coach we have here like
that is like the lifeblood of their team, meaning work the
hallways. Like, you know, you know, I've
heard everything from you go find the kids that are cut from

(54:12):
baseball. You go, you know, you recruit
the friends of your current team.
You you just see a kid in the heist, in The Walking in the
gym, like, hey, man, you're pretty big dude.
You want to come throw the shot?Like you're just, yeah.
That's why I just, you know, we almost called the podcast the
Mythbusters, you know, this myththat high school coaches can't
become successful college coaches.
It's like, and usually the number one sentiment is like,

(54:34):
well, they don't know how to recruit.
And I'm like. No, you got, you had to.
They might recruit more than you, Yeah.
And. They're doing hard and you get
kids are like, I'd rather go do this right?
Can I skip practice? Yeah, it's hard.
But like the yeah, the cut baseball player there was a kid.
So during the COVID summer, I also started making relationship

(54:56):
with our strength and conditioning coach.
We've got a really solid SNC program here.
Wow, like dedicated people like yes.
Not a football coach who does it.
No, we have we. Have.
We're 1/3, about 13 to 1400 students here, so we've got good
resources and Joe Chiramante is our strength and core

(55:18):
conditioning coach. I have learned a ton from him.
We don't see eye to eye on everything, especially like he's
a he's a Tony holler to the death kind of guy.
We ever run more? Than however much in.
Practice, then we're going to hurt everybody, right, But yeah,
so I started doing we just started doing summer.

(55:40):
We call it Bulldog power, summerBulldog power with him.
And there was a kid who he had atriathlete, A freshman had a
triathlon shirt on. And so hey, you going to come on
track? And he's like, no, I'm going to
play baseball. And I'm like, well, that sucks.
OK, well, he looks like an athlete, but you should probably
run, but whatever. And he gets cut from the
baseball team and comes out a week late, asks if you can join

(56:01):
the team late. He does.
And he ended up being a good kid, one of my one of my
volters. But then his brother is
currently a junior, and he just out of nowhere this year, out of
nowhere, great kid, great worker.
He's running 11/1. And I think 22, five.

(56:27):
And then it turns out he's a 400kid too.
And he split 49 on our relay last week.
So it's like, yeah, I didn't recruit his brother and get his
brother to come. I wouldn't have gotten Cooper.
Yep. And who knows where he'd be,
right? So it's like, yeah, recruiting,
you just got to go go talk to the kid, go ask him.
Like, we've had many, many. Amazing.
High school coaches here and literally not a single one has

(56:50):
said, Oh yeah, I just take who comes like, no, no, they hustle.
You got to get. You got to get the kids
ultimately, ultimately. Like, you know what I'm going to
have the 100 kids that come out is who am I going to have,
right? So I can I can't.
Once that roster's there, I can't complain and got to do
what I got to do right. It is what it is, But and I can,

(57:12):
I think my goal is like, I want to reduce the amount that I have
to recruit, right? Of course I'm going to do it and
I'm going to get FaceTime and gointo the weight room and work
with the kids and tell them theyshould do it.
But like my goal is like, make it the place they want to be.
Like make it, make it a place that they love being.
Make it so practice is the best part of their day.

(57:37):
They want to be there. They tell that people care and I
think that's a big part of the first few years is like, I just
want I think they realized like,oh, the the coaches here care.
They want us to do well, It's not we're not just hanging out
like they actually care about the product we're putting on the
field, right. You're asking for them to be.
Invested into the team to be that track athlete, not just

(57:59):
someone who's on the team. Well, golly Gee, that you can't
ask that if you ain't it. So you're showing.
Yeah, I love that. So 2019 first season 2020 we all
know what happens. 2021 is almost like a bounce back maybe
or did how how did your like andyou made indoor, you know, more
important starting in 21. How did like you had a team of

(58:22):
in 2019 of X number of kids did you have like how did the I know
what national participation numbers been?
So this is kind of where I'm going.
Did you have less kids show up in 2021 and you had to like
rebuild back up or we I think wehad about. 10 or 15 less on each
side. So my first year I want to say

(58:43):
we had like cuz kids sign up. I get like, for instance, this
year I think I had 130 boys signed up at one point and 100
girls and that between kids going out for other sports.
So we're like the backstop for alot of kids between that and
then two weeks and they're like,this is harder than I thought I

(59:05):
was gonna be. See ya.
We're down to this year we're down to 92 and 80, I think 82.
And so I think the first year wewere about that.
I think we had like 60 girls thefirst year.
Boys have always been about right, about 100 girls.
We went like 60 and then 20. I think we had like up to 70

(59:27):
girls did go down a little bit into 21.
But since then it's been steadily climbing again.
So it's, yeah, we, we saw that nationally, you know, obviously.
We pay attention to the nationalparticipation numbers, both
number of teams and number of participants for, like I said,
maybe obvious reasons for what we do here at Gill.
And that's what it was nationally.

(59:47):
It certainly wasn't. And I don't know, you know, I
think a lot of people try to explain why and all that kind of
stuff because you, you know, youcan talk yourself into both
sides, right? Like, hey, they, they just got
done with a year of no sports, boy, the hunger for sports.
It's going to be more and it's like, well, that's not what
happened. So what happened, right?
A bunch of 8th graders who probably didn't do it and so
they're not signing up as freshmen.

(01:00:08):
Oh, see, I didn't think yeah. And I.
Could. I don't know.
I could. I could probably go back.
Through my old rosters and do the numbers on that, but that's
just another thing, so that's interesting.
I wondered a little bit, kind oflike how we saw, you know, part
of the my, my opinion, you know,we saw like collegially and
professionally. We saw times and distances

(01:00:29):
really explode, right? And so everyone, you know, for a
distance, everyone's talk about the shoes and everybody thinks
the tracks and things like that.And certainly those I think all
play some part to it. But I also wonder like, oh, I
think a lot of kids got a lot ofrecovery that they, you know,
they were overtrained. And so we got this like natural
recovery and they super compensated back, right.
So I wondered if there's a little bit like kids of like,

(01:00:51):
you know, I like track and it was cool.
And I was a track athlete. I, I tried real hard.
But boy, you know that this pastyear where I didn't have it, you
know, I was OK, maybe I, maybe Ifound out I like chess instead
or I like to, I want to be an engineer.
So I'm going to do more math. You know, I think they kind of
found other things. I think it, I think that really
shows how consistency is important.
Consistency from your coach of like, I'm always going to be
recruiting the hallways. We're going to make the team a

(01:01:13):
fun experience to be in. I think that consistency is, you
know, probably where did I, where did I hear this from?
Oh, it was a, a marketing podcast actually.
And it said B plus consistency beats out random A+ performance.
So, you know, being really good every once in a while is going

(01:01:35):
to get beat from that kid who just, you know, the, you know,
we also call that grinders or whatever, but that kid who shows
up everyday. It's the same with coaches,
right? If you're consistent with your
messaging in your, you know whatyou want your culture of your
team to be and things like that,that will outweigh you just
getting after it one year and that's it.
Like that's where culture, especially it has.
To be consistent, it's there's no finished product ever.

(01:01:56):
You have to do you have to hit the I say like my speeches, but
my pre pre practice spiel every year is probably the same week
to week as it was like little tweaks here and there based on
the current make up of the team.But like we have we have these
words, We have our athletic department values at Byron
Center of effort, attitude, excellence and respect.

(01:02:18):
And so I was kind of circle around that and just use that as
like the guiding light and I talk about it all every year.
It doesn't change because if we don't come back to it
consistently, like it's not like, OK, we're done.
We built the house. You know what our culture is
here. No, it's, it is always changing.
And if you don't talk about it, it's probably not going to get

(01:02:39):
better. Put it that way.
A lot of first. Time Coaches, they coach how
they were coached until they getcoaching education and things
like that, which also means, andit's kind of the first time I'm
really kind of thinking about this and saying this out loud,
that also means that they kind of build the culture based on
how their culture was when they were athletes.

(01:03:00):
You're coming from like you didn't have a track culture.
It's not like you're like, oh man, my high school coach, you
know what he or she did really well, they did XY and Z and so I
do that with our team. You're bringing culture from the
private sector, youth, homeschool, football.
I mean there's a lot of differences from track on that.
You're kind of the culture that you bring in one and want to

(01:03:23):
have with your team is really a unique amalgamation of a lot of
non track things. It's true, however I think.
I think that's not much different than like what a good
track team is because a good track team is an amalgamation of
a lot of different people. The I think your track is so

(01:03:43):
cool because it's bringing kids from depending on the size of
your school, demographics are different, their grades are
different, the clubs they're in are different.
Distance runners always tend to be smart nerds.
Sprinters tend to be more of thejock football player kind of

(01:04:05):
kid, you know, jumpers, throwers, vaulters, they all
have their own thing. And like the good track team
brings all those kids together. Like it's not to me.
I don't want my team to be well,you have the sprinter group and
you have this group and you havethat group.
Like obviously you got to go to a meet and take care of business

(01:04:27):
and, and, and do your thing well.
And so word, it's hard to watch each other, but the team is
going to be best when the kids are there for each other,
regardless of what group they'rein, what their main friend group
is. You know I find high school.
Coaches fascinating. Like I have just like a million
questions to ask, but I want to make sure we get up to like to

(01:04:49):
today. So, so we went through 2019, not
that we necessarily go year by year, but OK, 2021 we had to
bounce back a little bit on our numbers through 2022.
You're adding your culture to it.
So kind of give me how's the last couple years been up to
today? Like, and what I mean by that, I
don't, you know, I don't really want to know like how many
county championships and kids used to college stuff like that.
But like how you've grown as a coach and and therefore have

(01:05:11):
grown your team, these. Yeah.
Well, the the biggest change wasstarting to teach.
And I can tell that story in a little bit.
But yeah, so I, so being able toreally be 100% myself is
something I learned in the past year or so, both with coaches

(01:05:35):
and with the kids. Like early on I was kind of, I
was, you know, I wasn't hiding anything, but pretty kind of
guarded. Like didn't want to, didn't want
to look silly, didn't want to. I, I, I like crazy challenges.
So I wasn't, I wasn't worried about like saying, Hey, we're

(01:05:57):
going to go try to do this right?
Like, and give the kids a, give the kids something hard to
strive for, but still like not completely comfortable in my own
skin yet. And then my first two years of
teaching just knocked that out of me.
I realized, OK, I've just got to, I've just got to, you know
what? This is who I am, own it.

(01:06:18):
The kids are going to make fun of me.
They're going to they're going to put my face on a T-shirt at
some point. Just got to own it.
It is what it is. And I think so.
The biggest thing is being able to, OK, we have to have this
conversation. We're going to have it, not
avoiding it. I've got assistant coaches that
I've got to talk to you and ask them a hard question.

(01:06:41):
You know what, we're not going to avoid this stuff.
I need help from my AD here. It doesn't matter if I want to
try to do it by myself, I got togo ask for help and just like
the living with the uncomfortable stuff and then
like letting what happens happens and not letting it keep

(01:07:02):
me up at night. Probably the biggest thing
that's changed for me and made me a better coach in the past
four years. If you're comfortable with it,
I'd love to kind of double. Click on what you said there.
It's interesting. I was just at the Pen Relays
this past weekend and was havinga conversation with a very good
friend, university coach. And we were talking about like

(01:07:23):
the context was kind of like as a track athlete, like
pretending, pretending, pretending to be who you're not.
And we're talking about like in performance wise, like, you
know, I, I, I want a full ride to the University of Florida,
but I'm a 62nd 400m runner. It's like, you know, bro, not
probably not happening. That's not your identity.
You're not. That's not you.

(01:07:44):
And if you really do like think that you're that, which means
you're fooling yourself, like that's not a really good life.
Like there's like something elseis for you.
Like you, you maybe should be a great maybe maybe you're a
coach, I don't know, or maybe you're an engineer, But like,
it's so freeing when you finallyget to be who you are.
And, and, and I think, you know,it's interesting when you're

(01:08:07):
talking about this aspect of life because I don't know that
it's necessarily late in life. I think some people maybe figure
it out as teenagers or and maybesome people don't find out until
they're 60 years old, unfortunately.
But when you almost like let theguard down, let the facade down,
let let what you think other people want to see of you.
And instead of just being who you are, like how you put that,

(01:08:28):
you know, comfortable in my own skin.
I just, I feel a little bad for those people and and not like in
a, you know, demeaning pity way,but it's like, oh man, I want
you to be you. Like that's all.
I can't don't I don't want you to act like who you think you
want. I want you to be who society,
who mom and dads, you know, theythey put pressures on kids.

(01:08:49):
I don't want you to be who you think other people think you
should be. I want you just to be who you
freaking are. Exactly and and that and that's
so freeing. When you finally get there.
Did you kind of have that catharsis or what?
What led what led to that, if you don't mind?
I don't. Well, I don't.
I lived most of my life, like worrying about what people

(01:09:13):
thought of me and we're not being for stuff.
Is it back here? So I don't know if you've heard
of this book. I picked it up on Twitter at
some point. The twin thieves this one bro
Dude A. Huge reader, first of all, and
so I read a lot of stuff that doesn't impact me.
That one, what was it? The two things were judgment.

(01:09:33):
The twin. The twin thieves.
Are fear of judgement and fear. Of failure, yes, and that I love
this for. With my kids.
I I messaged the author. I was like.
Bro, because fear of Judge, that's a big thing.
Judge that was that was mine. I will.
I am. Perfectly capable of saying
we're going to go do this and this and this.
I'm going to go to try. I'm going to go try running this

(01:09:55):
time for a 5K or a marathon or whatever and if if I fail I'm
going to do it again next year no problem but worried about
people judging me as was like the thing my entire life.
OK, I get this 100%. I'm with you.
I, I, I, I work extremely hard not to judge other people.
Like I, I, I, I just, I know everybody's going through

(01:10:16):
something. Even that person who cuts me off
in the street, on the road, I'm like, yeah, I don't know, They
might have just hung up with their wife and they're getting a
divorce. I don't know.
I don't know what's the matter? They didn't hurt me.
What do I need to be mad for? Right.
So the, the judgement thing I get.
But through your journey to thispoint, Colin, you have
exemplified the opposite of like, I don't care about
judgement. A person who is like in a cage

(01:10:41):
of judgment, like, oh, what other people think of me doesn't
just go, I'm gonna apply for this track coaching job.
That's kind of what I'm saying. I can't, I can't quite explain
it. It was like.
But I think what it shows is like because I.
Validate what you said. I think you, I believe exactly
what you're saying, but I think the real Colin Hunter was always
trying like they were little like kind of breakout little

(01:11:02):
chinks in the armor. There's like, oh, wait a minute,
I can I can go and do this. Yeah.
They. Fail.
They fail in front. Of a lot of people, by the way,
that that. That wasn't some kind of
solitaire you, you failed running a 5K even though those
other 5K people it's you. No one knows what the Frick your
PR is and stuff like that, right?
But if you go fail as a track coach boy you got and you had a
huge number. You know, you got 100 kids
there, which means they got 100 parents and right, that's

(01:11:22):
public, bro. Yeah, yeah.
So I. Yeah, so I figured out, like I
said, probably my the end of my second year of teaching that it
is this is just going to be a lot easier if you are willing to
be made fun of and willing to bethe butt of jokes sometimes and
willing to look silly. And it is a struggle some days.

(01:11:44):
But I am, you know what they theare you?
Are you happier today? Yeah, yeah.
Much happier. I'm so happy for you bro thank
you. Did that book so.
I read that book, I think. Two years ago, maybe 3 in that
book is very it's football forward, right?
Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think there's

(01:12:05):
another great book. We actually.
The author was a guest early in the podcast back in 2020.
Lead, for God's sake, which is our a Read us.
Yep, our A read us. Read that a few years ago.
I love that world you. It seems it's just it's one of
those ones where it seems so like kitschy, like like so
cliche, but man, it no, don't Todd Gongers.
So I love book records. Easy read.

(01:12:27):
Good lessons go. Read it so I love so if you're
listening you just got 2. Book recommendations you got
homework. So first of all, the twin
thieves is football forward and I here's what's interesting.
So both these books are other sport forward, meaning 20s has
all football examples and lead for God's Sake with Todd Gonger.
Gonger is a basketball for he's coming from a basketball family

(01:12:49):
in Kentucky. Both of them are just first
class. Next, I got to meet the author
of lead for God's Sakes, and he's actually a podcast guess.
So you might actually, whatever app you're using now, search
Lead for God's Sake or Todd Gonger and it'll bring it up.
But it's just so impactful because I think we get in our
bubble of track. This is why I I actually get

(01:13:09):
because I'm a track there too, right.
So I don't really, I don't really like basketball and I I
do love football of college football, but you know, I'm a
track guy. I think sometimes reading about
it in other sports I love, I love.
Reading about other sports I love, I love it.
I think it helps us see it a little differently.
Instead of just the, you know, everything that we have in our
mind about 8 laps to the, to thetwo mile, you know, all the

(01:13:31):
things that we have that are just in our box.
It helps us to see things that we don't know.
Maybe, you know, maybe someone'sreading football and you know,
they talk about a offensive tackle or like, I don't know
what position they're talking about.
But but the way that the, the way those two, you know, there's
two authors on twin thieves, if I remember correctly, there is
and, and Todd's another. The way those guys tell the
story, You don't have to know the sport.

(01:13:51):
You don't have to be in the football in basketball to get so
much value from it. So I love that you you brought
up Twin Thieves and I love that your AD made you guys read
leads. That was yeah, he likes us.
Our I We've got a great AD. Here he does a really good job
and coaches education and especially the relational part

(01:14:11):
of it is a big deal to us and soI love that.
OK. Are we at a point where I can
just pepper you with a ton of questions that I have or is
there more to the story up to today here at Byron Center that
we we sure go for it, OK. I I I just think.
Our high school coach, like I, Ilove our college coaches.
You know, I was AI coached high school for two years and then

(01:14:31):
eight years of of college. I call myself a college coach,
but I just see so much more impact coming from our high
school coaches moving forward. So I just love just like
peppering you guys because you guys are, I don't know, I don't
want to say ground floor, but you know, you're, you're, you're
in the just the thick of it with14 to 18 year old kids, right.
So I just love kind of picking your brain.

(01:14:51):
One question for you that I'd love to know because of what you
just told me. So how have you when you go
through something, when you become better, whether it's I'm
a better distance coach or pole ball coach or I learn an
organization to help my team, you have a responsibility to
share it. So whether it's with your kids
or your staff, you have a responsibility to almost like

(01:15:15):
pay it forward, right? You know, knowledge that's in
our brain that stays there is worthless.
So knowing what you just told usthere about, you know, come from
my own skin, you know, I'm much more comfortable being who I
really am. How do you you got 14 to 18 year
olds guy? You know, you see the gamut in

(01:15:36):
high school. You see, I could tell you some
stories about my. Classroom.
Yeah, you do crazy stuff. You've got 15/16/17 year old
kids that you're like man. You're like a little 40 year
old. They're they're so mature as a
16 year old. And then you've got the
knucklehead, seniors are 18 and you're like, bro, how are you
ever going to make it like there's a few kids I've been
teaching since. They were freshmen, they're
graduating this year and I'm really curious what's going to

(01:15:57):
happen with them. How do?
You do you use the experience that you it's still new to you.
This was just a couple of years ago is what I'm hearing.
So this is still new to you. How do you lead young people now
knowing this meaning you don't want to see other kids who are
shells of themselves like you'relike, man, little Mary, you,

(01:16:19):
you're actually kind of funny. I wish you'd kind of come out of
your cell a little bit. How do you lead knowing what you
know now? Big question.
I know there's. No like 1 answer like.
You know, it's not a workout, it's just how do you, I think
it's talking to them. Being interested in what they
have to say, knowing their, likeknowing their name for I've got,

(01:16:44):
I have between the, I've got what, 160 to 70 kids on my team
and I better know all of their names by the end of week 1.
It's easy, obviously, because I didn't think about that part of
it, Yeah. Plus plus the classroom.
Knowing their name and remembering what they do is

(01:17:07):
showing them is like the simplest thing you can do to
show them care. Like when coaches are like, Oh,
I I'm just bad with names. You might be, but you can still
like I'm good with names and faces.
So it's not as difficult for me.But like, that's such an easy
thing you can do is just, you know, know who they.
Are and know what they do. Even the even the JV kid who is

(01:17:30):
probably never going to make an invite roster, probably never
going to score for, you know, what their PRS are.
And that's like, PRS are great, you know, but like the kids got
to know that that that's not thething that you care about.
Like I just, I've got a few kids.
Who? Probably could have run in
college, but like they didn't and if they love running for the

(01:17:56):
rest of their life I don't thinkthat's a failure, right?
So I assume you follow. Steve Magnus on Twitter.
I know Steve. Yeah.
I just saw a tweet. From him, he it was he quote,
tweeted a article or statement from Zuckerberg saying that
they're going to start working on creating fake AI profiles for

(01:18:16):
kids because the average kid hasthree friends and they have the
capacity of 15. And Steve was like, this is the
dumbest thing. Like rightfully so.
Steve was like, go help them go meet other people than not to
create fake friends, right. How many kids not how many are
you seeing and be very general because obviously you know
little Susie and things like this, but are you seeing in

(01:18:36):
general? Are you seeing kids?
So this is teaching, not just track and field because you see
a lot of kids throughout your your career and everyday.
Are you seeing kids? I don't want to say broken, but
like when you said know their names, which seems like the most
like basic, like the most basic thing, duh thing, but how?

(01:18:57):
Many adults dismiss. Someone because they're 14 or
15, just because they're youngerand just just dismiss them.
And now this is what OK, This isthe real superpower of the track
coach, right? You empower young people.
You show them that you mean something.
And there's so many adults in life, and I'm not saying
teachers necessarily, but other people just in in life and in

(01:19:17):
our society that dismiss someonejust because they're 14.
Not right. Yeah.
And. Just because they're this.
They're this. Generation and this generation,
Oh my gosh, this is the laziest.Generation.
Since the previous generation, Since my generation, Since your
generation. Like no, like the the

(01:19:41):
Ecclesiastes in the Bible, it says there's nothing new under
the sun. There really isn't right.
Like like teenager are the same.I think teenagers are pretty
cool. One of the things I like to do
is so like part of the culture building part is I'll just send
out a Google form. Tell me what the word effort

(01:20:05):
means to you. And it's all pretty
run-of-the-mill stuff. But there aren't like they say
really cool things and they likethey should get more credit than
they get. And I'm blessed, I'm blessed to
be teaching and coaching in a pretty good district.
But I really think that teenagers get more crap than

(01:20:26):
they deserve right now. I think I think this generation
is going to be just fine. I think they do a really good
job and I think they try just ashard as anybody else ever has.
So yeah, you nailed it every young.
Generation is the worst generation ever.
The world's going to end when these kids become adults.
By the way, that's what they said about my generation.

(01:20:47):
Exactly. That's what they said about my
parents generation when they were, you know, it's just in the
day. It's like, you know, teenagers
are less educated, less motivated, less smart in general
than the 30 year old. But they become 30 year olds
though, they go on to become educated and interested and all
that kind of stuff. What are you seeing?
You have a successful program there.

(01:21:08):
What are you seeing kids in regards to?
So I hear, you know, and again, everything when I say I hear a
lot of it's through conversation, but a lot of it's
through Twitter, right? You know, kids just have AD one
or bust mentality. They they all think they can go
to University of Michigan or Michigan State.
In reality, they should be looking at Grand Valley and
Lansing Community College. You know, are you, are you

(01:21:30):
seeing that? It's like, do all your seniors
say, hey, coach man, I'm a Michigan kid, I'm an Illinois
kid. We're in a weird spot.
Actually the her, I see it academically here.
So we're, I think track and field wise, we're getting to the
point where we're getting kids to go to college for athletics.

(01:21:51):
We've got we've got a few that are going to go.
We've had a few that have walkedon places.
No, I don't think we I've got 1D1 runner at CMU right now.
He runs cross country, but of a few NAIA, one of our throwers is
going to go throw for Davenport next year.

(01:22:15):
And sporting wise, we don't havea, we don't have a huge D1 or
bus mentality here across the athletic department, but we're a
very high academic school. And so I see a lot of I'm the
I'm the the shop teacher and I see like there are, I think, I

(01:22:39):
think a shocking amount of kids that are going D1 academically
who I think could be going, you know, at a smaller school might
be better for you. Maybe maybe you should try the
trades. Maybe you should like the we
have there's like a the BC decisions Instagram page.

(01:23:00):
I don't know if like this. I think this is a popular thing
now where some student runs the page and everybody gets their
name with a graphic and their college logo and their major.
And whenever I see a kid that says I'm going to Michigan and
I'm undecided, I'm like, is thatthe best idea?
Right, right. So in sports, we don't see it a

(01:23:21):
ton here. I think kids, if anything, we
need to like our athletic department has made a not to get
to kids to go to college for sports, but just like achieve
more like, well, let's set the bar higher.
We were like the we were kind ofknown for being one and done in
a lot of sports in the playoffs for a while.

(01:23:43):
And our current AD was like, listen, we have the resources
and the talent to do better thanthis.
Not that winning is the only thing, but if if we're going to
do this, we got to, you know, wegot to strive for excellence.
And so it's evolved to where I think kids are realistic and but

(01:24:05):
it's not a yeah, not AD one or bust mentality right here.
What about? So you mentioned you had kids,
you know. Davenport in Central Michigan
and NEI as and things like that.So you, you, you've had kids
being recruited kind of it's, it's a 2 pronged question.
What are you seeing as a as the high school coach, as the, as
the coach? What are you seeing college
coaches doing really well recruiting.

(01:24:27):
And then the inverse is like what, what do you wish they
would do a little bit better? And that and that could be
everything from like they contact you or they don't
contact you or they're they're making all these wild NIL
aspirations. What are what are the college
coaches doing well and not doingwell?
I'm not sure that. I have.
I'm not sure that we have the profile here to have a huge

(01:24:50):
opinion on that on that yet. I get letters for kids.
Still haven't had a ton of interaction with college coaches
to this point. The team when I started, when I
took over like on it was not a great track team.
We've seen both sides success year over year and we're pretty

(01:25:12):
good both boys and girls. Now I think we're I've had more
kids recruited than ever, but I don't have a ton of interaction
with college coaches. OK, but that's fair.
But you're the. Head coach.
So what's your opinion? Because this is a pretty hotly
debated argument. Of Should the college coach?

(01:25:34):
Talk to the high school coach ornot.
I'm, when I recruited, I was recruiting was kind of my main
thing. I never good or bad, but I
never, I shouldn't say never. I, I did not make an effort to
reach out to the high school coach unless it was like, Hey, I
need Susie's phone number or something, right?
So I'll get that. I'll get like, I'll get coaches.
That are like, hey, e-mail me hey, can you connect me with

(01:25:55):
with Natalie? Yeah, yeah.
Or here's a list of. Here's a list of that.
They'll e-mail me and say here'sa list of the kids we're
interested in. Can you, can you put us
together? I appreciate that.
What do you? Prefer like your kids going to
Davenport. He was a pretty good kid.
I know Davenport's program, so that kid is pretty decent.
Would you have wished not knowing and not wanting to know

(01:26:15):
specifics? Would you have wanted the
coaches? And you're not the throws
coaches, but just bear with me, the coach to call you and say,
hey, tell me about Larry. You know what kind of character
or are you cool with just like, yeah, here's Larry's phone
number. Good luck.
I think I want. I want the.
I don't want to influence the kids too much in that way.

(01:26:36):
To me, if they, my thing is if they decide they want to compete
in college, I want to help them as much as I can help them.
But I don't want to be like, hey, this school is better than
that school. You should go here.
You should go there. And so if a college coach asks
me to connect them, great. I will.

(01:26:59):
I'm willing to help them if they, if I get a letter in my
school mailbox that says kid X, you know, from whatever college,
I'll hand it out at practice. And ultimately I want the, the
kid to find where they fit. Yeah.
And, and whether that's whether that's D2 and AIA where whether

(01:27:21):
the coach went through me or not, like if I, I mean, because
they can see like athletic.net, we're in athletic.net state now.
You can see the numbers there, right?
You can figure out who you want to recruit pretty easily.
And if you figure out like it's it should, it's not hard to
figure out like the equation fora school's student e-mail

(01:27:42):
system, right, right. So you can like, OK, once you
forward or contact on Instagram or Twitter or whatever.
It's huge out here. Now I'm not I'm.
Not offended if. If somebody goes straight to the
kid, I just want the kid to findthe right fit because tangently
with that argument is. The high school or junior
college coach who gatekeeps so XYZ university sends a letter

(01:28:05):
for information and the coach islike, my kid, my kids better
than I'm not giving this letter and they throw it way, which
that is just abhorrent to me because it's like, man, that's
ego. Like let the kid make the
decision. I don't care.
You know, we talk a lot about the kids having D1 or bust
mentalities. There are coaches out there that
that they have the D1 or bust mentality like, oh, my kids not

(01:28:27):
going to. They want the ego of saying my
kid went to Michigan, Michigan State, central Eastern,
etcetera. So, yeah, not not great, not
great. What are you seeing?
You know, you've had five years of of coaching, 5-6 years of
coaching there. Are you seeing any difference?
Like I love when I get a coach who's been, you know, 30 years
in the game. I'm like, how have kids changed?

(01:28:49):
Tell me about what it was like back then.
Yeah, yeah. Have you seen much of it?
Because. You, you got to see at least one
year, you know, pre COVID kid and now you're seeing post COVID
kid. Are you seeing any differences
in drive, education, respect we've levelled back?
Off, especially in the classroomand I think we saw a little bit
in in. So our current senior class is

(01:29:12):
like a COVID kid class. However, our senior class across
the board was loaded. Football team was state runner
up, boys soccer was state runnerup.
What's the math? Tell me this year's seniors.
We so this this is my. 4th year teaching?
Yeah, our seniors were my first freshman teaching and that was
2020. OK, that's so they were.

(01:29:36):
So this year's seniors were 8th.Graders at COVID.
That's what I was trying to figure out.
No 2028, so 5. 4320222022 So they were they were 7th, 7th,
8th or 9th graders. Wow.
Yeah, And I. Think.
I think so. Our current senior class
athletically didn't miss a beat because these kids are monsters.

(01:29:57):
But I think general student population, we've kind of come
over that and there are a lot ofannoying behaviors in here that
we are not a fan of as adults and we have dealt with them with
strategic things in the classroom in the high school
specifically. Are you a cell phone?

(01:30:21):
Go away school, we are a. Starting this year, we are a you
got to turn it in at the door ofeach classroom.
You can have it in the hallways.I've got a cart with a pocket
chart over there that they got to put it put them in.
And this year has been my best year teaching.
It's so my kids are talking to each.

(01:30:41):
Other they. Interacting.
My wife is a substitute teacher and so our high school, yes.
Did she go to high school this fall?
I can't remember. She either taught high school
this fall or last spring. I can't remember.
It was the first year of no cellphones.
And she's, you know, she did a long term stuff and same thing.

(01:31:02):
She said the same thing. So they have cubby hole.
You know when you walk in, you got to put it up and you don't
get to it until you walk out. And she's like Mike, she goes.
They're talking, like properly talking to each other.
There's less game changer. Yeah.
Which I can't, you know, I grew up without a cell phone in
school, Obviously. Yeah, me too.
Like it was. I didn't have like.
I had a flip phone until I was like, I don't know, mid 20s my

(01:31:25):
my my. I think my younger sister-in-law
had an iPhone before I did so. So I can't imagine growing up
with. This in school with it just it
seems so foreign to me. Hi Colin, you are a leader.
It's a really amazing story. Are you doing anything?

(01:31:47):
You're doing a great job at Bayern center very focused.
You know, I know a lot of your attention teaching and coaching
is right there are have you started reaching out from the
school? Meaning are you doing anything
at for the Michigan high school track coaches association?
Are you teaching level ones? I don't know you do anything.
I would love to do that someday.I'm.
Actually on my first year on theMitka some Michigan

(01:32:12):
Interscholastic Track Coaching Association, I'm on the track
and field committee for the first time this year.
OK, so that's cool. We had our first meeting your
last Sunday. Yeah, I took, I went through
USAT left level 1 and level 2. I love coaches education.
I think it's awesome. But I'm of course you would
engineer. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I'm a go learn, go learn stuff guy.

(01:32:34):
If I could teach that stuff in the future, that'd be sweet.
But yeah, so. So you're starting.
With MIDCA, what led you to likereach out?
I mean, that's not everybody does that, so I like.
Being a part of stuff like that,there is there are I want to be

(01:32:57):
a part of changing things for the better and like I'm not a
there's things that I would likeimproved and I'm not going to
sit here and be one of the ones that just complaints about it.
I would pay, give me, give me see the table and I'll actually
help. Yeah.
Be a part of making things better rather than just, you

(01:33:20):
know, off in the gallery. Yeah.
Laughing or, or or poking fun oror complaining.
The Mika Track Clinic is one of the top.
Ones in the country, Have you spoken at that yet?
I've not spoken there yet. Maybe someday.
Someday soon, you know you're on.
The committee now so you know exactly who to talk to.
Yeah. But you got to give it a shot,
man. Yeah, I would love to.
I would love to do that in the future, yeah.

(01:33:40):
One one of the and I know you know about the.
Series and my challenge is goingto be for you to create your own
episode here for the Guild 1918 project.
You know, when I we've been doing this series, the Guild
connections podcast now for you know, we're on season 6 and it's
every Monday, you know, a deep dive.
You know we've been going for anhour and 30 hour and 40 at this
point and they're awesome and we're going to continue doing

(01:34:01):
that. But I wanted to find a way to to
help you. You know, I think there's a lot
of coaches and you're, you know,what's interesting, you know,
assuming your natural age, you know, kind of, you know, just
knowing your story, but knowing your, you know, we talk about
kids training age, right? Like how many years they've been
your coaching age is, you know, 5 or 6 or whatever you're,

(01:34:23):
you're, you're such a pup in this.
I love that. That's a good thing.
That's a great thing. That's a great thing.
So but but you have such naturalleadership in the, in your,
you're a learner, you're a lifelong learner.
And so those kind of people, people like you, again, I talked
about this earlier. You have a responsibility to
help others. You, you really do.

(01:34:45):
Yeah. And so I was wanting to find a
way to do that through a medium that I, I do that.
You know, you and I follow each other pretty closely on Twitter.
So you, you see the things I do on Twitter.
Oh, yeah. I I plan to submit something for
you. At some point, OK, I'm not going
to do that when we have. Four track meets.
No, you know, excuses. No, no, I don't know.
You're exactly right. But what I, what I hope is, is

(01:35:06):
for a guy like you that certainly should be speaking at
track clinics, that could be a, a, a for many different reasons.
A scary proposition, right? And what I hear the most from
coaches when I've been reaching out the Skin 1980 project is,
you know, I don't have anything to say, Mike, and it's not true.
Your experience matters. Your experience matters.
And so my hope is that the Guild1918 project is like the first

(01:35:27):
step, like, OK, let me kind of gather my thoughts around a
topic and speak for 10 to 30 minutes.
And then, OK, how would I do that now on a stage age, because
it's much easier, less intimidating to do it, you know,
here on the microphone and and, you know, no one's going to Boo.
You can't hear if people Boo youwhen they're listening to the
podcast, right? So you don't have to worry about
any kind of, you know, front rowpeople are yawning or looking at

(01:35:50):
you weird. You do have to worry about that
when you're on the stage. But I hope I, my hope is like,
this is like step one for peopleto like explore their thoughts
around things. And I just think, you know,
you're what you talked about howhow you thought about applying
for the job. And then, OK, so step one was
X&Y and ZI think that's important for people to learn

(01:36:11):
because I think there are peopleout there who want to coach, but
I'm not good enough. I think that's what I didn't run
track. And I that's one of.
The things I'm passionate about,like.
I think the the a smart coach can figure out the training
part. It's all the stuff around it
that's the hard part. We we've been kind of double
clicking into that. Over the past couple of episodes

(01:36:32):
about and through Twitter, yeah,I look at the Irving brothers
down in Texas, you know, Tesco, Seto and Summer Creek, you know,
they're winning state title, setnational records in the four by
one and stuff like that. And they're kind of showing that
I don't want to be little the XSand OS part of it and say like,
that's the easy part. But when it comes to running a
successful program, I kind of think that might be the easy

(01:36:55):
part. All this other dealing with 14
to 18 year old kids, if you're in high school, 18 to 22 in
college and and empowering them and and the culture.
I think that might be the harderpart.
And you know what we don't ever talk about that at track
clinics. I shouldn't say that it's
getting better, but it's gettingbetter 80 percent, 80% of things
you. Talk about clinic is.
Gonna be how to make a long jumpor jump farther exactly yeah.

(01:37:18):
I have things to learn about distance training, but those are
never the first ones I look for.Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
All right, Colin, as you look tothe future, man, you get your
crystal ball there and you're looking at, you know, we're in
the 2025 season and you know, a guy like you, you know, an
engineer brain like you. You're thinking about 26272829.
What's got you excited? You're not lying.

(01:37:38):
Yeah, I knew it. I my.
Brother-in-law. Is a electrical engineer I was a
computer engineer for like 1 semester so I know the that's
why I know of the brain power because I couldn't do it so
other smart people like you do it what's got you excited man?
You're looking at, you know, your assistant coaches with
Aaron and those guys and the team.
You already know what freshman you have and things like that.
Let's get you excited here in the next couple years, the SO.

(01:38:01):
We have a really game changing group of seniors and they're
going to, I don't say this in a negative way, but they're going
to leave a big hole. And so seeing how our younger
kids step up, I've seen kid like, we went split squad last
Saturday and sent our stud relays to one place.

(01:38:22):
And then the invite we usually go to took a few younger kids
and saw some. I was like, oh, I don't got to
worry about the 400 next year because this kid and this kid,
they're going to be ready. I've got some young we got, we
got young kids that I'm excited about.
I don't, I don't, yeah. I don't want to make a ton of

(01:38:44):
assumptions or predictions. I just, I'm just glad.
I'm just happy to be able to coach kids that like what
they're doing. And so continuing that and
seeing who the next ones that decide that they want, they want
to be track athletes, figuring out who those kids are, is what

(01:39:05):
I'm excited about, dude. I try very hard to stay humble
in the sense of that every person who comes to this podcast
is a special individual person who has their own journey, their
own successes, their own failures.
But you know, it is hard again, after 300.

(01:39:26):
You know, I've said this a couple Times Now on the podcast
where, you know, I think it might be fair to say that I'm
the most educated, in depth interviewer of track and field
coaches. I don't know that anybody else
has done three. I could be dead wrong and just
be a dummy, but I've talked to long form 300 plus coaches and I
don't even count my normal conversations right.

(01:39:47):
So it's it's easy for me to think like, oh, you know, they,
they start grouping together. Colin's story is going to be a
lot like so and so story and so and so.
Your story is so unique and I love it because it's still what
what is common amongst the people that we talked to here
and the vast majority of track coaches in this country is.

(01:40:07):
At the end of the day, you're a leader of young people.
You have such a tremendous positive impact on these kids
that are discarded, thought lessof, and these are all our future
store owners, presidents, you know, the principles, all these

(01:40:28):
young people they are. Going to affect us when we get
older. They're going to affect us.
They're going to be running stuff and we got to, you know,
hopefully it's going to be good and is going to be good because
of people like you. And I love that your experience
is different. I, I, I, I treasure and value
someone who was a, a high schooltrack athlete, college track
athlete, become a coach. They, they impart amazing things
in the kids. You, you, you have a story to

(01:40:50):
tell. When a kid comes to you and
says, you know, coach, I'm not feeling it because, you know,
struggles at home where I don't feel like I'm smart because of
blah, blah, blah, blah. You have such a unique
background to be like, hey, let's, let's talk.
Let's let's go for a walk. Let me tell you the time that I
didn't believe in myself either.You know, there are kids when
they come to me and they're like.
They're freaking out because they're a freshman and they

(01:41:12):
don't know what to major in in college.
I'm like, step back a second. Like, let me tell you a story.
About somebody who? Switched careers completely
halfway through like it's all going.
To be OK, yes. It's those are my favorite
conversations. I just had an hour long.
Conversation with an athlete. Big time athlete.
I won't say your name for obvious reasons.

(01:41:32):
She's about to graduate college.And it was the same thing.
Like Mike, I just, I, I feel like I'm supposed to have it all
put together. And I, and I, I really don't
know what I want to do with my degree and do I go to grad
school? And I was just like, you know,
to me, you're so young. You're 22.
Give me a break. I was like, I'm double your age.
I didn't figure out my passion until I got here at 3031.

(01:41:54):
I had two other careers. I thought I was a track coach,
that I was a poker player. All this stuff.
You know, at that age especially, you know, a freshman
in high school, it's a little precious.
Like, what do you mean you don'tknow what to major in?
Get out of here. You don't.
Yeah, exactly thinking about that.
But it's like, dude, life is like a buffet.
Go test things, go try things. You don't have to have it
figured out at 1822 thirty. Oh, go try things and you didn't

(01:42:15):
have it figured. Out you thought you were one
thing. And guess what?
Make a mistake and then and thendo it again.
That's right. Yeah.
Dude, I'm so grateful for you. Man, first of all, your time,
it's super busy you all those track meets and I'm just yeah,
I'm we're taking a breath this week we're.
Good, good. You deserve it.
They deserve. It that's good, good because you
know you're going to blink and you're already into conference

(01:42:37):
and regional. That's the crazy part.
It's the time of. Year for me to say hey kids like
unbelievable these are the most.Fun meets because it's
championship. Season, but just like live in
the hour don't look forward to next week because it's going to
be done so so grateful for you grateful for your time it's the.
Most expensive thing you give me.
So I really am just appreciativeof you being here today and

(01:42:57):
sharing your journey so authentically, man.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thank you guys again for being here.
Enjoy the crap out of this man. I hope you guys do too.
You know these people that join us and you know we're we're we
only get 52 of these a year, butyou know, the goal is to get
catch them all Pokémon right to get every coach on here cuz
again, this is what a great example of a unique background

(01:43:19):
that is really impacting young people in an amazing way.
So appreciate you guys being here today.
Join us next week. We'll have some fun.
Then again, see you guys the goals to appreciate the coach.
The ones that point people most every season needs a voice of
reason speaking the growth you got to prep before you carry the
load ice coffee to the soul. For those of us who stay on the

(01:43:40):
go proper handoff to stay in thezone which you packing for the
road. There's more than one way to the
go. Taking those S paying your toe.
It ain't practice if your purpose Saint Clair it can't
happen until you listen with both is you can't mentor without
a mentor of years of experience.You can reinvent those years.
Every plan's got to stand and deliver to the price sacrifice.

(01:44:00):
Can you give up you. It's a choice and a fight, not a
win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to, it's all
about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
6,000,000. Waste of time, choose none.
So y'all cross finish line. The work ain't done so we learn
from the experts but y'all got to put in the network.
Your athletics is the network. It's all about connections put

(01:44:23):
together for the profession to where every track coach could be
blessing.

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#312: Colin Hunter-Byron Center (MI) High School

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