EP400 — Coach Jesse Parker (Blinn College XC/Track): Rebuilding a NJCAA Contender, Culture, & the JUCO Advantage - Airey Bros.'s Radio

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Airy Brose Radio. Be there or b
Square because it's all killer, no filler. This is Jesse
Parker and you're listening to Ari Brothers Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Ladies and gentlemen, howdy and aloha. We are here. You
are there, and we do appreciate you tuning in for
another episode of Airy Bros. Radio. But before we get rolling,
you'll know the drill. Make sure you hammer that like
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review and share helps us grow and get back to
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(00:39):
Apple Podcast. And as always, this episode is fueled by
Black Sheep Endurance Coaching for all your ultra marathon and
nutrition needs. And let's not forget while we're here. Over
here at Airy Bros. Radio, we're here to shine a
light on the programs and coaches we wish we had
access to when we were coming up through the recruiting process.
If you were someone you know as looking for the
right fit at the next level, please do us a

(01:00):
favor share this episode with them. On to tonight's guests.
Coach Jesse Parker is joining us from Blynn College. A
couple of his highlights as they are relaunching the program
in twenty twenty four. Both squads are cracked the USTFCCA rankings,
qualifying for the NJCAA Nationals, and now enter the twenty

(01:23):
twenty five season ranked tenth on the men's side and
eleventh excuse me on the women's side. The Bucks double
their roster sizes fallen post of massive time drops at
the Texas AM and M Invitational competing against powerhouse NCAA
Division I programs. Coach Parker spent twenty years at Sam
Houston State, coaching in NCAA All American and helping the

(01:43):
Bearcats to twenty one conference championships. Without further ado, it
is honor pleasure I have you joining us this evening.
We do greatly appreciate your time, Coach Jesse Parker. Welcome
to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Thank you for having me, guys, and thank you for
a wonderful intro. I hear all that and makes me old.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, you said when you graduated from high school, and
I've got quite a few years on you, so you're
doing great. So age is just a state of mind.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yes, correct, correct, coach.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves and get
into the show anywhere you would like us to share
your socials or the program socials or the athletic department,
anything you got going on you would like to plug
or promote. The floor is yours.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, real simple. You can follow us on Instagram at
Blenn underscore XC and you can also send me an email.
Is just my name Jesse j E. S. S. E
Dot Parker at Blend dot edu. Those are the two
easiest and quickest ways to reach out to me, and
please do if you've got questions or if you feel
like Blend is a good opportunity for you.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Awesome and we'll put all that show notes. Put all
that information in the show notes for you. Coach, I
should have mentioned this before we got on, but I've
been trying to get Jimmy to move to Texas for
probably the last decade, so if you could do your
best to sell the state to them, that would be great. Anyway, Coach,
we all have our origin stories to the sport, how
we got into it, how we got into coaching. Mine

(03:07):
involves a fish tank and a five mile race at
the age of five. Jimmy involves following me around to
gyms and cross country courses at a very early age
through high school and college. What's your origin to the store,
to the sport, and how did that lead you into coaching.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
I actually feel like it was kind of unique compared
to most coaches. So most coaches end up coaching a
sport that they participated in, they had a passion for it,
they kind of followed it, they had opportunities. Obviously gained
a lot of knowledge and experience just participating in the sport.
But throughout high school I was a football player and
a powerlifter. I didn't do any running at all, Like

(03:44):
I be honest, I'm a terrible athlete. But my best
friend in high school was a very good distance runner,
and the boys team at my high school. I had
nothing to do with this, but they won two cross
country state championships while I was in high school, my
sophomore year and my senior year, and my best friend
was on both of those squads, and so I was
just always around it. Like I just liked the environment,

(04:05):
like the culture, you know, I like going to meet
I'm a kind of a numbers nerd, so like the
numbers associated with cross country just attracted me in track,
and so that was kind of like my background. I
just when I first got to SAM Houston my sophomore
year of college, I pretty much just volunteered to be
a manager for the track team, just doing like I

(04:27):
don't I'll do anything, and one thing led to another.
I had a unique opportunity to actually start coaching when
I was a junior in college. There was a coaching
turnover and they got into the cross country. We got
into the cross country season that year and they hadn't
hired a coach yet. And long story short, that's how
I got started. I just kind of took over and

(04:49):
did my graduate work at SAM Houston, and then they
created a position and hired me full time soon as
I finished my first master's degree. And so that's kind
of how I got started. I just enjoyed it. Do it.
Like to do a lot of reading. We would read
any training book, would talk to anybody I could, and
just kind of accumulate knowledge over the years.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Okay, okay, you said your first master's degree, so I
take it you have multiple masters masters.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Oh, I'm one class. I'm actually finishing one class this semester.
It's a graduate class in business in finance. I got
bored a few years ago during COVID and just started
taking a class and one thing led to another, and
on one class away from finishing it. I don't know
if I'm ever going to actually use it for anything,

(05:32):
but you know, it was kind of kind of fun
to get.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah. Well, I mean, as we know, being a head
coach is kind of like running your own business and
being a CEO, So you might not think you might
put it to use, but imagine doing expense reports and
budgets and fundraisers and recruiting is all is all business minded,
so it's probably got to get put to good use.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
A lot of marketing. I actually when I starting the
program here, you know, starting it from nothing, I used
a lot of the stuff that I learned in like
a marketing class in terms of like how to create value,
how to communicate value to like customers. Only I'm thinking
about it in terms of recruits because one of the
things I realized when I first got here is, you know,
Blend's got a great college, Like the amount of support,

(06:18):
like the campus is amazing, but it hasn't existed in
the running world in thirty years, so nobody in the
running world is really familiar with just Blinn College in general.
Because it's never been a consideration for anybody, and so
that's been one of the big things just kind of
starting out, is going around and just trying to educate
people on the opportunities here at Blenn, but also educating

(06:41):
people in the state on the junior college level. You know,
here in Texas, particularly Southeast Texas, there haven't been any
junior college running programs, and so it was never really
a consideration. Most high school athletes coming out of this area,
you know, they're going to go to an NCAA program
D three, D two or D one, and you and
your college provide such unique and awesome opportunities, but they

(07:03):
just haven't really been here. So, like I said, trying
to educate people and show them that value. Like I said,
I kind of went back to some of those marketing classes.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
I took what has been the biggest learning curve starting
a program from scratch.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, probably the biggest learning curtive is getting the athletes
caught up to speed, and I think that was just
you know, kind of where we were starting. I didn't
start till the end of May a year ago, a
year and a half ago or so, and there was
literally nothing. There was no athletes. Most coaches, when you
take over a program, like there's already some athletes there,
there's already like a structure in place that you kind

(07:42):
of inherent, and you'll go and you'll make modifications, you'll
bring your own ideas to it. But here there was
literally like nothing, and they were like, here are a
bunch of resources, just do what you need to do.
And so that was the first learning curve, was getting
athletes and then getting them caught up to speed on
what it took to compete at the collegiate level. Because
by the time I really got to rolling and recruiting

(08:02):
in May, most athletes had already made up their mind
and so I was either having to change minds or
move on to the next recruit who might still be
opened and open to consideration. So that was probably the
biggest learning curve at first, and starting a program from
scratch was just actually getting athletes on the roster and
getting them caught up to speed so that we were
ready to hit the ground in August when they got

(08:25):
on campus.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Did you leave Sam Houston for Blynn?

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, So I always recruited junior college athletes. I feel
like I made a living on Sam Houston when I
was at Sam Houston on recruiting junior college athletes, and
so I really developed like and that was things to
Dave's health. He's the head coach there. He was the
head coach at Garden City Community College in the nineties,
had very good programs there, and so I learned a
lot of junior college just the system and how everything

(08:53):
works via him, and so very thankful to him on
that front. But yeah, I saw that Blynn was advert
like hiring a cross country coach in like April, and
obviously I was intrigued, but I was more intrigued to
him initially, like I just wanted to know who the
athletic director was going to hire because I wanted to
get it on the ground floor. I wanted to send
athletes here. I wanted to be able to recruit athletes

(09:15):
out of Blenn And you know, he just started telling
me about his vision for the program and the resources
they wanted to put into it and kind of what
he thought it would be over the next like three
four five years, and you know, we just talked a
lot about just again like our vision. He started asking
me like who I should hire or you know, like
who she should hire or like some of the stuff

(09:37):
that he would he would need, And like I said,
one thing led to another, and I just thought it
was just a great opportunity and excited to. Like I said,
Blen's kind of a historical program in the junior college
track world, and I was just very honored to be
the person to like, Okay, let's bring Blynn back into
the track and cross country community.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
I want to get into the vision. But before we
into the vision, can you dive into a little bit
about the historical aspect about the program. I know we
talked touched on it briefly, but like I said, I
can remember back in the day in the you know,
early to mid nineties and just seeing you know, national championship,
national champion after national champion. So can you give us
a little stroll down memory lane and give us some history.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, and so a lot of this is gonna be
like secondhand, Like you know, you pass on like oral
stories to the next generation. So I feel like I'm
part of that, like oral stories have been passed on
to me. But so Lynn in now they just had men.
So we were actually the first women's program here across
country and the track part of it, but they had
a program in the seventies in the eighties, and they

(10:42):
were pretty good in the mid eighties. And this is
what I find interesting in the track world. Pat Henry
was a high school coach in New Mexico and he
ended up getting the head job here at Blynn, and
I don't know how long he was here, but it
wasn't very long. And then he won two national championship
here at Blynn, and then I think he moved on
to LSU and they hired Steve Sylvie, and Steve Silvie

(11:05):
continued that tradition and I think went in on to
win another eight national championships in track couple in cross country.
Like to be honest, it was kind of hard to count.
There's a you can actually see some of those trophies
that Steve Sylvie won behind me. I cannot take credit
for any of that, but you know, Blen's pretty proud
of those, and so yeah, and so they won ten

(11:27):
national championships through the mid nineties. I don't know the details.
I've heard a bunch of stories. I think there was
just a lot of financial stuff going on, not just
at Blynn, but I know Wharton had a good track program.
Sam Jack had a good track program. There were good
junior college track programs in this area, and they all
started to drop them in the nineties, and so you know,

(11:48):
I was young at the time, so I can't go
into details, but I just wonder if there was a
state funding situation or you know, pooling of resources. I
know when they dropped the program here they added women's
volleyball and women's softball, I believe, so I think there
was a little title nine into that. So multitude of reasons.
But yeah, very you can look in the junior college

(12:11):
national records and blind still you know a handful of him. So,
like I said, just kind of I feel like I
stumbled upon the lost city of Atlantis or something El
Dorado maybe, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Like well, I appreciate the little history lesson because I
consider myself to be somewhat of a trackeek and Jimmy
can attest to that. But I had no idea that
Pat Henry coach at Glynn at one point, So that
thank you for sharing that and upping my track nerd
status a little bit.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
He's been successful everywhere he's.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Been, Yeah, he wins, he wins. So talking about the
vision you said you had a meeting with you had
a let director. He kind of broke down his vision
for the program. You gave him your thoughts for the program.
So what what is the vision for the program? You know,
maybe this year and beyond five year tenure.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
I'm really kind of a big picture person when it
came to like the vision and what I wanted to see.
When I took this job, it wasn't like a one
or two year thing. It was, hey, can we really
bring Blend back to be you know, one of the
pillars of junior college track and field along with some
of the other historical programs Iowa Central, Iowa Western South Plains.
Chris Bean has the program at Odessa doing very good

(13:23):
right now, and so it encompasses more than just like
the competitive aspect of it. So obviously we got to
have good teams, but you know, hosting cross country meets
one of the things. Obviously at junior college level, there's
a lot of student population involved with it, and we
try to support the community quite a bit. There is

(13:43):
a huge appetite for cross country at the high school
level in this area, and I think the administration, along
with the athletic director sees that we can use. You know,
I have a lot of experience hosting meats from one
of the large meets when I was at SAM Houston,
and so being able to create a meat that we
can bring high school athletes onto campus, have them compete
in a competition while coming to Blenn and becoming more

(14:07):
familiar with it. So I think the administration sees, you know,
what the program can bring to the college and to
the community. From that perspective, you know, I really envisioned
building this through the distance front one of the and
that's not I love the track and field aspect of it,
and I love all of the power speed athletes, but
I do feel like there's been a little bit of
a hole in this part of the country with distance runners.

(14:31):
You know, most of the good collegiate programs around here
are very power speed oriented, and so I just feel
like creating a junior college development program here at Blenn
is kind of what was needed in this area. And
that's really kind of how I viewed it from a
vision standpoint too, is we're trying to be a Division
one prep program, not really just a junior college, a

(14:53):
very good junior college program. So, like I said, that
was kind of my vision of it as a place
where the athletes in this area that just were gett
being overlooked or didn't have opportunities that maybe were available
to high school athletes five years ago, or that just
needed some financial assistance. You know, we're resourced well from
a scholarship perspective here, much more so than I think

(15:15):
a lot of Division IE cross country programs are. And so,
like I said, I felt like that was the vision
that I wanted to create to kind of support the
athletes in this area as they transition. I also realized that,
you know, every Olympian has multiple coaches throughout their career
and throughout their stages of development. I've always felt like

(15:35):
I've done a great job with developed like teaching young
athletes how to run and how to operate successfully as
a collegiate athlete, and that's kind of what the junior
college levels for as well.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Coach, you mentioned long term vision, but in your year one,
you had rankings, you had kids ever ranked, took kids
to nationals, and now you guys are again. So do
you think you'd have success this early on?

Speaker 1 (16:06):
I'd look humble and say no, but I just know
the talent in this area. I know like the competitive
advantages that Glynn had, and so I did feel like
we would able to bring athletes in. I also think
that's one of the other beauties about junior college is
it doesn't take long to get good in junior college
because you're only dealing with athletes on a two year

(16:27):
cycle rather than on a four or five year cycle.
And so, like I said, I just knew the resources here.
That was one of the reasons I took the job
was because of the situation. I thought we could come
in and be competitive early and then over a period
of a couple of years, become very competitive.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
How's the team looking right now? I know you guys
did well at some of the first meets of the season.
How you guys doing, and how's the rest of the
season looking.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
We feel really good where we're at right now. So
we our first meet of the year was at Southwestern University,
and into that meet last year and it was very
the very first meet, we did okay, but I think
the athletes went into it with a much different mindset,
and I think that's one of the things A year
of experience, not just with the returning athletes, but a
year of experience myself as a coach and just being

(17:14):
able to kind of move through the season. We had
very good results. We were second out of twelve or
thirteen teams. The only team that was ahead of us
was the University of Texas, So that was just kind
of a nice feeling. The administration here was pretty pleased
with that, just to see the competitiveness and how quickly
we've improved since last year. And then I look at

(17:35):
the times and performances when we were at Texas A
and M this past weekend, and you know, the men
average a minute and a half faster over eight k
that we did last year. The ladies are averaging about
a minute and a half over a five k than
we did last year on the same course, and so
we feel real good about where we're at. We just
try to focus on ourselves and trying to get a

(17:56):
little bit better. I think we have a big race here.
In a week and a half we go to Hill College,
which is another junior college established junior college in this area,
and so looking forward to racing against some junior college programs.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Now.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Coach talking about the potential for the talent in the
area and that the potential just in the area having
a cross country program where for the people. We've had
quite a few people from West Texas on to familiarize
us with West Texas. But we're Jersey guys, and a
lot of our listeners are from New Jersey. So can

(18:33):
you give us a little little Where are you located
in the state of Texas.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, so we're I'm in the southeast part of Texas
and Brenham. If anybody is from the south anywhere in
the part of this country and they've had Bluebell ice cream,
they should be at least a little familiar with it.
Blue Bell the headquarters of Bluebells here in Brenham. A
lot of the I've met a few of the children
of the Cruizy family and a lot of them are

(18:58):
blend Alum. Yeah, it's kind of our little tie there
to outside of this area. But we're on Highway to ninety,
which is the main highway. We are literally halfway between
Houston and Austin, so very conveniently located about an hour
and a half from downtown Austin, an hour and a
half from downtown Houston, about two and a half hours
from downtown San Antonio, just kind of right there, close

(19:21):
to the coast, but we're not on the coast, We're
not in Central Texas. We're just nestled here in the
Brasses Valley.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
So you got plenty of humidity to train.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
We do have a lot of the poor man's altitude here.
We do have a lot of hills to run on
as well. The one thing I do love about Vernham
as a distance runner is there are a bunch of
back road dirt roads like to be able to get
out and run on, and like I said, it's just
kind of a nice environment. We don't have the true altitude,
but we kind of have everything else that a distance
runner wouldn't need.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
And with that poor man's altitude, I assume that especially
in the fall, coming off of the summer, you guys
are practicing in the mornings.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, we do all of our stuff in the morning.
The only things we do in the afternoon will lift
weights in the afternoons on Tuesday Thursdays, and then we
have our study halls on Monday Wednesday afternoons and a
team meeting on Mondays. But yeah, we do all of
our running in the morning. I don't know if I'm
kind of old school or kind of my approach, but
I'm a very run one a day kind of coach.
I do have a few athletes that will double on

(20:22):
Mondays and Wednesdays, but for the most part, we do
all of our running in one morning session.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Okay, so I assume no double thresholds for the Glen No.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
That's not really I'm too old for that. I think
that seems to be one of the new age of
training stuff. I follow much more of Lidyar Daniels kind
of co approach. Those were probably the three big literature
influences on my running coaching style, So probably a little
old school from that perspective.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
We love the Daniels formula over here.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Oh yeah, I love it. And that's one of the
things I think you see in the double threshold model
is you kind of see what other coaches have done
with threshold in the past and then just really kind
of expanded upon it. Well, I know there's some variations,
but I look at Daniel's cruise interval sessions. It's kind
of like the grandfather of all this threshold stuff that
has come out, and we've realized the value of it

(21:14):
here as of late, but that's kind of the grandfather
of it all. At least I feel.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Like, yeah, we love cruise moths too, don't.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
With Jim coach, you said that you knew the resources
that you had at Blaine, that's why you took the job.
When starting the program, did you feel like you had
to really pull kids in to get them, Hey, we're
starting from round zero, come join us, or was it hey,
I want to be part of something awesome. Yeah, I'm there.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
When I first started reaching out to people, it was
in May, and most high school athletes have made up
their mind already. You're too late to really get into
the international game with all the paperwork required for that.
So yeah, so that was kind of the Yeah, that
was probably the struggle is just kind of getting kids

(22:03):
to either change their mind, which is hard to do.
I had a lot of scholarship to work with, so
that always helped get people to kind of change their
mind a little bit. But it did take a unique perspective.
I will say that every athlete that first year that
I was able to bring on campus for a visit,
all of them, you know, as soon as they got here,
were just like I can't believe, like they were the

(22:24):
fortunate ones that Blynn had added the program and they
were in the spot where they were still evaluating or
open to, you know, their college future. I will tell
you though, a lot of the athletes on the team
that first year didn't have plans to run in college
at all, or they were kind of scrambling around at
the last minute trying to find a place on my
women's team. Last year, I think there was only one

(22:46):
lady who had plans to run in college until I
kind of reached out to her. So I really just
reached out to a lot of high school coaches, people
that I'd known over the years, just looking for anybody
that was a competitive cross country runner that maybe was
thinking about not doing it. I thought the junior college
situation would be a great transition for them. And you know,
they all return this year, so it wasn't like any

(23:08):
of them came in for a year, just as like
a mercenary. They all returned and have had good summers
and are running better. And so that was the other
thing that I was real proud of kind of the
culture in our first year was the athletes bought into it.
We did the half marathon championships last year and I
told the athletes, like a month out, I was like, Hey,
we don't have to do this. If y'all just want
to go run the cross country race, we can do that.

(23:30):
And the vast majority of them were like, Nah, coach,
we want to stay, We want to do this half marathon.
We like this. And so that's where I kind of
knew that the culture was good, that the athletes were
enjoying what they were doing and kind of buying into
their experiences.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Here, what do you credit that culture too?

Speaker 1 (23:50):
I'm going to steal something from Dion Sanders when he
took over at Colorado. I heard him give an interview
and he said something along the lines of he wasn't
trying to change a culture. He was just trying to
bring his culture to Colorado. And you know, while I'm
not trying to compy Dion's culture by any means, I
do think that general philosophy is a good approach. And
that's all I really tried to do here. Like I

(24:12):
love distance running, like this is what I do a
living I had, Like I said, I wasn't a distance
runner out of high school, and so I gravitated into this,
and so that's really what I just tried to do here.
I just came in and you know, showed the athletes
that I was going to always be prepared for practices,
like I'm always prepared for meetings, and just tried to

(24:32):
bring a professional like approach to what we were doing.
And I think athletes, really anybody was going to feed
off of their leader and kind of operate how their
leader does. I joke with people when you know, oftentimes
you see someone's dog and you see them and you
kind of see like, ah, that's a person like that
matches like that makes sense. Well, I've always felt too

(24:55):
like athletes tend to take on the personality of their coaches,
and so, like I said, I just really felt like
if I just come in here and operate the way
that I operate, like, people are going to gravitate towards
that and they're not going to know anything else.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
I agree with you, it's a dogs coach.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, you can usually tell someone's dog and their personality
kind of go along.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Absolutely. Absolutely. We're big d On fans too. Jimmy's a
graduate to see you, so, oh okay, see you, Denver.
But we love we love Dion and the attitude and
the things that he's presented and created up there. So
we do appreciate that, coach. I'm curious, what's the student
athlete experience like at Blynn Academics? Uh, training, what's life

(25:42):
like in Brenham.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, So from the academic perspective, Blynn is a has
a lot of ties to Texas A and M. There's
a realis campus. Uh, there's a campus. Blinn has six
different campuses. Our main one is where the athletic department
is located. Is here in Brenham. We have two thousand
and students that live on campus. Where the largest on
campus living community for any junior college. It really does

(26:07):
feel like a small four year and I think that
is the unique aspect. There's students that come here from
across the state for the academic programs, very good engineering program.
Blynn has its own engineering program, but it also has
a dual engineering program with Texas A and M. And
so I do have a student athlete right now is

(26:28):
very very intelligent, very good with engineering, and so he
lives here in Brenham, lives on campus, does all of
this stuff. But he takes three classes here with Blinn
and then he takes two classes here on campus that
are taught engineering classes that are taught by A and
M professors, and so there's kind of a dual education program.

(26:50):
With engineering, I have a lot of nursing. This is
gonna be a little bit of a recruiting pitch as well,
but there's a lot of student athletes coming out of
high school that want to go into nursing. But I
can tell you, as somebody who was coaching at the
Division one level for so many years, when I would
get a student athlete who was serious about nursing, I
very rarely would recruit them, and simply because after their

(27:11):
sophomore year they enter into a nursing program and it
is very, very difficult to handle both. It's not impossible,
but just very difficult. And I think that's one of
the beauties of Blynn is the student athletes who want
to go into nursing. I have half my women's team
is going to do nursing. They come here for two years,
get their prerequisites out of the way. If they're good

(27:32):
enough students, they can graduate in a year and a
half after their sophomore cross country season and move right
into a nursing program. They can get the collegiate competitive experience,
they can get funding, or I can scholarship to help
them pay for school and they get all their prerequisites
out of the way and then move into a nursing program.
So I also feel like a lot of student athletes

(27:53):
that are serious about nursing, I think the junior college
route is something that they should look at because it's
going to provide a better life to athletic raci where
they can be successful in both areas. And so that's
another big one. We also have a lot of technical trades.
I have a student athlete here right now that is
getting a degree in land surveying, and so, like I said,

(28:16):
there's a lot of more skilled degrees that some of
the athletes are working on as well.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
You say two thousand students, is that not just largest
in Texas but in the country.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
So I'm kind of excited our national championships aren't Fort
Dodge this year. I've never been on I've been on
a lot of junior college campuses. I've never been to
Iowa Central, I've never been to Iowa Western. I've heard
really good things about both of their campuses. But yeah, yeah,
like I said, it really feels like a small four
year here at Blynn, And that's what, like I said,
I think makes us unique in the junior.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
College world coach, where are you at right now as
far as ranked eleventh and tenth?

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, So the rankings came out today. The men are
ranked eleventh the women. The women dropped to eighteenth today,
But that doesn't surprise me. I think, you know, we
had a good showing at our first meet. We competed
at Texas A and M against a bunch of Division
I programs, and I thought we competed well, but we
didn't finish this high. And typically you're going to drop
in the rankings just people like to see wins. But

(29:21):
we're excited about. Like I said, we go to Hill
College and so we actually get a chance to race
against some junior college programs here in a week and
a half, and then we're going to make a trip
to Fort Worth to race at Dallas Baptist, which is
a large They have a large meet that has quite
a few Division two programs. Some of the better Division
two programs in this region all show up there. And

(29:43):
so this is where I think, you know, we tend
to hit our stride later in the year, once we
kind of get a chance to compete against athletes that
are you know, a sophomore, freshmen and sophomore ages versus
some of the four year schools. So we competed against
this past weekend.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
You mentioned in that first year you weren't able to
get any international students because you didn't have enough time.
Do you have any international students now on the team.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, so right now I have one. I was actually
so I say that I was able to get one
international last year, but he was a transfer. Eric Legott
transferred from Middle Tennessee and so he was already here
transferred in as a sophomore. He's graduating here in December,
so this is his last cross country season with US.
I do have a couple of international student athletes lined

(30:30):
up to come into next year, but most of my
recruiting background has been Texas. Like I said, I'm from
the Austin area originally and been in the Houston area
for so long, and there's so much talent in this area.
I really the foundation of our program is going to
probably be Texas kids at least as long as I'm here.
I do like to have a few international student athletes.

(30:52):
I think they helped bring a little bit more maturity
to our team. You know, sometimes when you have a
bunch of a team full of eighteen year olds, It
just it takes a little time to grow up. And
so when you have a few internationals or a few
more mature athletes on the team, it helps kind of
facilitate that, and you tend to get a little bit
better professional approach from the young athletes when they have

(31:14):
somebody who can model it for them on how to
be a professional.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Mentioned in having a little bit older students that are
more professional, do you feel they're like in an assistant
coach to you and can kind of help you as
far as hey, this person's a little bit older, listen
to them and they follow suit.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Oh. Absolutely. When Eric got here, Eric was a common send,
and so it was a bunch of eighteen year old
freshman high school athletes. And then Eric transferred in having
one year of college experience already, and that was one
of the things that Eric and I talked about early,
was just his experience on how to function well at
practices on a consistent basis, how to live a structured

(31:57):
life outside of practices so that you're not interfering with
your academic work or with your athletic pursuits. And he's
really kind of been the glue that has held I
thought that has one brought both our men's and women's
teams together and helped create a good internal culture within
them when I'm not around, And so he's really been

(32:18):
a godsend. Like I said, his just being a little
bit older and a little bit more mature and having
a year of collegiate experience, I think helped that transition
a lot for the young athletes last year and then
now this year, having a bunch of returners who have
gone through the fire once kind of know what to expect,
have a good indication on how to prepare. Makes life

(32:40):
a lot easier this year than last year when I
was having to demonstrate and spend a little extra time
getting everybody caught up to speed quickly.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Coach.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
When are regionals?

Speaker 1 (32:53):
So our regional meet, yeah, is October eighteenth. We are
actually hosting our regional meet. This is the first year
that Region fourteen has had a cross country championship since
I'm gonna guess the mid nineties. I don't know the
exact date, but since all the programs in this region
dropped it, and so this is the first year that
we have enough schools to qualify for a regional championship.

(33:15):
So we are hosting that on October eighteenth. Pretty excited
about that. The other thing that I'm hoping this does
is continues to grow the sport at the junior college level.
There's some other junior colleges in this area that have
started dipping their toe into track and cross country, and
so I'm hoping, you know, by us hosting a regional championship,

(33:36):
we're centrally located in this region, so something that can
be convenient for most of the programs to get to
helps kind of facilitate the growth of junior college running
in this area and hopefully encourages some of these programs
to continue to kind of build their programs in. A
couple of the colleges that have indicated they have an
interest in adding it might go ahead and do that

(33:57):
once they see something's already established form, you have.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
The course, you're already designed and laid out.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yes, we do, so we're gonna We're gonna do it.
So there's the local high school. Brenham High School has
a large invitational in early September that draws high schools
from all over the place. A lot of high schools
come up out of Houston area. They've done it for
probably fifteen years, but it's known as the Hillacious Meat.
Brenham is a very hilly area and this course is

(34:26):
very hilly, and so we're gonna use their course for this.
So that is a fair warning to any of the
other coaches in the region that are listening to this
that it is gonna be hilly, and so it's going
to be a true cross country race. But I think
that's a little advantageous for us because we run on
it all the time.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Is that a single five K loop or is it
multiple loops?

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah, so it's a two mile loop with a five
k extension on there, and so the high school uses
it for their two mile on their five k races,
and so I just made a little modification and we'll
do the two mile loop followed by the three mile
loop or the five k loop, and then the ladies
obviously will just do the straight five k loop. So
the five k's one big loop. But yeah, it'll be

(35:12):
it'll be an interesting meat really, like I said, just
really excited about it. Like I said, I like being
able to bring and build cross country in this area.
Showing our administration you know what I think we can
do when we get a little bit further along and
we're ready to start hosting high school meets on campus.
I want to give him a little little taste of

(35:32):
what it might.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Be like, Jim. Judging by the look on Coach's face
when he's describing the course at Brenham High School, it
sounds like he's got a course like at Alfred State.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yes he does. So it sounds it sounds like he's
got a secret weapon that no one knows about.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, I think people know about it. Like I said,
Brenham High School likes to brag about it, calling it
a hillacious meat and so that is the reputation of
this area. But I think that's why a lot of
the athletes like coming to this area because it does
give a unique experience. You know, Houston, so I'm supposed
to brag about Texas here. So if you're from the
Houston area is very flat. So if you like flat ground,

(36:13):
you get out towards the Brasses Valley where we're at,
it gets very hilly. You get out towards Austin, especially
west of Austin, it gets very hilly, so you can
get kind of whatever terrain you're looking for. But from
the high school level, a lot of high school app
teams come here, and I think for that specific reason
that it provides a unique cross country racing experience that
they don't typically get in the Houston area.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
And from a facility's perspectives, does Blend have a track
on campus at.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Well, not at the moment. So where the track was
located back when they had their program is still there.
The foundation is still there, but the track surface is
no longer there. So I tell people it's our half
marathon training facility. It is a perfect four hundred meters
asphalt loop, it's flat. We'll do our tempo runs there,

(37:01):
we'll do that kind of threshold work. And then there's
a very nice park in town, Whole Park, where we
like to go do our grass interval work during the
cross country season and then during the track season. There's
two local high schools that we use. We go and
use their track. There's both small schools. One's a very
very small I think two A school and the EZRA

(37:23):
three A school and they've welcomed us with open arms
and they're like, come on, coach, bring your teams, and so,
like I said, the community has been very welcoming. There
are some plans for and I don't want to speak
too much, but there's some plans for a massive athletic
complex that's going to include soccer field, baseball field, the

(37:44):
softball field, the cross country loop, and a track. So
I'm hoping that all gets finalized here and there. I
think the plan is to break ground in the spring,
so we will see awesome.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
You're curious our religium. Sorry, I mentioned the enthusiasm to
run the half marathon last year, and you mentioned the
half marathon training. Is that something that you pepper in
a little bit of maybe half marathon specific stuff or
is it more like we're all in on the cross
country and our long run is gonna take us and
carry us through for the half marathon championships.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
Like the.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Half marathon is kind of the icing the cake kind
of approach to us. And so we do I do.

Speaker 4 (38:29):
Like a lot of threshold work and we'll do quite
into the tempo work throughout the year that we'll end
up doing at a better half marathon training intensities or
our training speeds, just because that tends to fall around
the threshold area for a lot of athletes.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
But that's kind of how we approach it. We don't
do anything specific for the half marathon outside of I
do have two athletes that are good. The longer the
race gets, the better, and I do like the idea
of having fresh legs and the half marathon after a
couple of days after across country race, and so as
we get a little bit later, I do have two

(39:05):
guys that'll focus their training a little bit more half
marathon oriented. But now we were all in on the
cross country front. That's the holy grail for.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
US coach, Like Rich was saying, it's beginning the podcast.
Being a college coach, can you hear me?

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, I can hear you.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
I'm sorry being a college coach, you're running a small
business and you got a lot going on Because you're
building a small business. What does your daily look like
as far as being the head coach and how do
you delegate those responsibilities or are you the only one?

Speaker 1 (39:38):
So right now I'm the only coach on staph Is.
This is part of the building process, but I should
be hiring an assistant next year and especially as we
start adding more of the track component to what we're doing.
So it's kind of nice because I don't have I
can kind of just make a decision and do it.
It's also a little bit of a challenge. I'll say
that has been one of the hidden challenges in the

(39:59):
first year is not necessarily having an assistant to bounce
ideas off of or just trying to give me feedback,
Like I see this with this athlete. Do you also
see the same thing? What are you seeing with them? Now?
This is how it's been my entire coaching career. I've
had some good managers over the years, but I've never
had like an assistant, So this is not anything abnormal

(40:20):
for me. But I'm usually up at like five am.
We start practices sometime between six and six thirty, finish
in practice about eight thirty. I go home, I walk
the dog, get showered and cleaned up, come back to
the office looking kind of at least a little bit
more professional rather than we're in practice clothes. And then
it's a lot of just administrative stuff, whether it's recruiting,

(40:43):
which is an all the time thing, even when you're
done recruiting, like you're still recruiting, just administrative stuff, getting
the regent meet that we're hosting prepared today. I had
to make a trip to go pick up a timing
system and meet with lady who's helping me as a
meat director. And that's more of what the most the

(41:04):
bulk of my middle of my day looks like is
administrative coordinating, handling schedules, turning in like you said, like
budgets or travel expenses, itineraries, and then we have a
study hall or weights in the afternoons that typically begin
about three or three thirty, And that's kind of how
my day finishes up at five, and then you know,

(41:27):
onto whatever's next after that.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
You mentioned recruiting, and the more and more we talk
to coaches, it's kind of all over the place, especially
in this day and age with Instagram and text messages.
How do you communicate with student athletes? How do you
reach out.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
To them text message? That's probably the quickest way I
usually try to get contact with information from high school coaches.
I don't use any of the recruiting services most of
the I'll tell athletes like if I get an email
a generic form letter from a recruiting service, very rarely
do I read it. And I've even had a few

(42:03):
of these recruiting services that don't list contact information for
the athletes, and I'm like, I, this is not helpful.
So that's why I say, like just emailing me or
reaching out to me on Instagram. I don't communicate via
I don't have conversations via Instagram. But when people contact me,
I do like, hey, send me, send me this, or

(42:24):
get a hold of me. But most of the time
it's via text messages. I still like to call athletes.
I feel like the recruiting process is where you lay
the culture initially of what's expected and how you're going
to operate. And I feel like that's got to be
You can't just do that via text message. You got
to talk to people over the phone a couple of times.

(42:44):
You got to meet them face to face or at
least via zoom how. I've done it a few times
with some international athletes i've recruited, but I feel like
this is where that coach athlete relationship really gets started.
Athletes that fill you're honest with them in the recruiting process,
they feel like when they get there as a freshman,

(43:05):
everything you told them in the recruiting process is true
and accurate. They're going to trust you more and buy
in sooner and quicker. Then you know, if it's a
very you know, wheeling and dealing type of recruiting approach,
you never really know if that personality is going to
match how that person's going to interact with the other
athletes on the team. And so I've done this long enough,

(43:27):
like I'm not so driven that I'm going to have
a terrible culture just to try to win. That's miserable
for me as a coach, Like that's just not fun
even when you win. It's like I've had athletes over
the years. I had a very good athlete when I
was a young coach that I just could not stand.
And after he was a regional qualifier on the track,

(43:48):
and I remember after his last race, you know, he
didn't run a very good five k. His parents were there.
He was like, Coach, I'm gonna go home with my parents.
And I was like, great. And then I deleted the
number out of my phone and we've moved on, and
it was just it was difficult to deal with and
it was a little bit of a culture problem. And
so I learned very early on that I want to

(44:09):
have athletes that like being here, that are buying in.
And so that foundation is said in the recruiting process.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
So coach, I wanted to go one way, but you
brought something up there, and I want to I want
to touch on that because I've I've coached, I've coached wrestling,
I've coached CrossFit, and I've had those members that show
ups at the gym and when they calm, you're like,
oh man, you got to come to this class. Really,
But I also know that there's a benefit to trying
to work with that person or trying to not let

(44:39):
that person bring me down, right, And obviously you've been
in this game for a while, So how do you
address that if maybe you recruit someone and then they
show up on campus and they're not the person you
thought they were, but they're on your team, they're they're competing, well,
they're going to all their classes. How do you address
that well.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
So one of the things that I love about working
with this age group, and and again why I thought
the junior college level is a good fit, because this eighteen,
nineteen twenty years of age is such a crucial age
range for the vast majority of people, which the first
time they're really out on their own. You know, the
traditional person has grown up in their house, they're sleeping

(45:17):
in the same bed mom and dad, or brothers and
sisters are around. There's some sort of family structure, and
all of a sudden they go to college and that
family structure is gone or it's you know, a distance,
and so you really kind of form a lot of
you solidify who you are, I feel like at this age.
And so that's where my responsibility as a coach when
these athletes come in is to help guide them through that,

(45:39):
because there's gonna be they're gonna make mistakes. I've always
kind of said, and I'll kind of beat myself here,
but freshmen are just dummies. Like they do dumb things
because they're eighteen, and as long as they're doing what
every other eighteen year old that I've ever been around
for the past twenty years is doing, I don't really

(46:00):
get that upset about it. We just try to correct
it and we move on because I understand that's part
of the process. The problem is when sophomores are still
acting like freshmen and then things are no longer being
age appropriate. And so, like I said, I think there's
a maturing process that goes on, and I've always enjoyed that.
I like guiding people through that. I probably have a
unique way of doing that. I can be very sarcastic.

(46:24):
I try to instill a culture when the athletes first
get here to not rely on me and not rely
on coaches. I feel like that is one mistake that
young athletes make. And they'll come in and you know,
their work very hard and very eager, and they're very coachable,
but they come in and they're like, tell me what
to do. I'm like, it's not that simple. You know,
there's a process to this, and everybody's going to be
a little bit different. And so I do a lot.

(46:47):
We have a three week training camp prior to school starting,
and as part of that training camp, I have a
four part running education program where we spend about twenty
minutes and I kind of break down like running education
into four different segments and kind of teach them like
how we're going to go through things, and teach them
the language of running and explain to them like this
is how I do it. But if you've come from

(47:08):
a different system, or you move on to a coach
in a different system, you're going to immediately be able
to speak the language or relate it to something that
we've done here. You know, an athlete who I don't
do it, I don't follow a double threshold model. But
an athlete who's come through here is gonna have done
a bunch of cruise intervals and they're gonna have done
a lot of workouts that somebody who moves into a

(47:29):
double threshold model is going to do. Now, we may
do it by distance, they may do it by time,
but they're going to immediately understand when they say LT two,
they're going to relate it to you know, their their
half marathon pace or their ten k pace or whatever
it might be. And so I think that's an important
part of the development here is like I said, teaching
athletes these things so that they're no longer asking the

(47:51):
they're no longer saying, tell me what to do, and
they're coming to me with coach, I think I should
do this, this is why what do you think? And
that's ultimately where I want the athletes to get to
in this process, because I feel like once they're able
to ask the right questions, they're going to be able
to answer their own questions and I get to move
on to the next generation and kind of teach them

(48:12):
that while that sophomore group, you know, handles business from
a from a running perspective.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Richard, I know you got one for coach. I just
want to respond to that. I really appreciate that perspective
because I know I was one of those athletes that
depended on the coach, especially the coach that recruited me,
and when they walked in the room, I was the
guy that was on their hip and wouldn't leave them alone.
So I appreciate you bringing that up. And I also
appreciate the run and education. Hey, you're gonna come here

(48:39):
and you're gonna be able to go to any program
and fit in because I'm going to educate you on
and so thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
It's a process and I enjoy this process with them,
but it's some Some move through it quickly, some take
a little time.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
We've kind of covered especially in that last question. But
and Jimmy and I know this because we've been through
the system, But can you talk about the opportunities that
are provided through the junior college experience that sometimes those
NCAA minded athletes are overlooking.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah, so one, and this is everybody's concern. I don't
care who you are, there's always a financial concern. How
much scholarship am I going to get? How much money
am I going to have to pay out of pocket?
And that is the ultimate question that parents are concerned with,
not how much scholarship you're going to get, but how
much are they going to have to pay? And so
one I think at the junior college and at the
community college level, it's going to be significantly less even

(49:35):
without scholarship and aid. And I can tell you Blynn
is about sixty percent of the cost as it would
be any other public in state institution. So there's a
forty percent discount for the exact same classes, the exact
same classes that are going to transfer to the four
year institution. So that is the other part of it

(49:55):
that I've been trying to explain to people. Coming to
Blinn doesn't change your long term plans of competing a
D one program or competing at a power forward, transferring
on and getting a degree from Texas Tech or A
and M or wherever it might be. We can be
that springboard though, that provides that development in a little
bit closer knit environment. I remember my freshman year of college,

(50:16):
I went to Southwest Texas and it is a big
four year school, and I was overwhelmed with my freshman
year and I just feel like I was from a
small town. So I felt like if I had went
to a place that was a little bit more of
a smaller town atmosphere in my first year, would have
been a much better transition into the four year institution
or into a university that's maybe in a metropolitan area.

(50:38):
If I went to school in Austin right out of
high school, I don't know how focused on school I
would have been, if I'm just being completely honest. And
so I ended up going to sam Houston. Like I said,
it is a little bit smaller community, and I felt
like that was the better transition. So I think that's
value that's created. I also think that we can provide

(51:04):
a better balance for the academic and athletic approach. This
was one of the things that I had started to
notice at a lot of Division one institutions and talking
to different coaches, is these athletes are being scheduled as
if they're professional athletes, and in a lot of situations,
schools kind of getting tossed to the side. There's becoming
more and more degree plans where coaches are like, yeah,

(51:26):
you can't pursue that. I talked about the nursing There
were numerous student athletes over the years that we would
help them get a public health degree and make sure
they had all their prerequisites to get into a nursing program.
But we were like, you can't do nursing and be
an athlete here, and so I feel like that's very limiting.
That a lot of especially the D one focused athletes

(51:48):
don't quite understand, is if you're actually looking for a
well balanced approach to your academics and athletics, the junior
college route may be the transition you need, and as
you become more mature and you're ready for it now,
you might be ready for that high level business approach
that has become powerful athletics nowadays.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, we appreciate that perspective. That's that was our biggest
thing is the price tag. And I don't think some
kids are necessarily thinking financials. I'm a high school teacher,
so I know just the way they take care of
their phones and different things that they're not concerned about
financial things. You know. It's like that was a fifteen

(52:33):
hundred dollars phone you just threw on the floor. Do
you and then you see what gets left in the
lost and found on a regular basis, It's like, Wow,
someone just left their North Bace code here to not
even concerned about the two hundred dollars price tag that
was on it. So I do appreciate that that's such
a huge thing to not come out of college with

(52:53):
debt or a minimal amount of debt, something that you're
not working half of your you know, first ten years
at a college to pay off your loans and stuff.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
One of the things that I have enjoyed that I'm
able to do a lot more here than I was
previously is to offer out large scholarships on top of
that already discount. I've had a couple of student athletes
already that you know, when I'm able to offer them
a scholar you know, they're good athletes, and they've gone
through the recruiting process that some of these d ones,
and all of a sudden they see these scholarship offers

(53:23):
that they're actually getting, and then they start actually doing
the math. You know, they didn't know how much that
phone was before, but when you start putting it on
paper and they start looking at it, they get really
good at it. But being able to offer a large
scholarship and tell them like, hey, you're not gonna have
to pay for school. You're also going to be able
to possibly keep your paill grant. Just the smile that

(53:44):
I would see on some athletes faces or on parents' faces,
that sense of relief. And this may be my ego
coming out a little bit, but I like being able
to do that for people, and like I said, put
people in good situations that they feel like, Okay, this
is this is the environment where they can be successful.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Coach, another point you made that I don't I definitely
didn't realize it, but you said, you're taking the same classes.
You're gonna have to take the same classes here, it's
just half the cost, or you know, not the cost.
And I don't think kids understand that they want to
have that sweatshirt with whatever the logo is to you know,
when they go to the local grocery store, oh, I'm
going here, or when they're walking down the hallway and

(54:24):
see all the flags where kids are going to school.
You know, the junior college might not be as sexy,
but at the end of the day, you're going to
have less debt and you're getting the same education.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Well, and I'm not trying to change that plan. Walker
in here with your your A and M shirt on,
I want you to go to A and M after this,
Like I'm off. Like that's where the junior college is,
the original transfer portal, Like this is the idea of
come here and go there. But when you're in a
four year institution and somebody's there for two years and
then you have a meeting in your office and they're like,
I want to enter the transfer portal, it's always awkward

(54:55):
and weird and uncomfortable, even when it's done for the
right reasons. But here, when an athlete comes up and
says like, coach, I want to transfer to A and
M or I want to transfer to the University of
Houston or the university even current Word or Stephen F. Austin,
I'm all for it. Like that makes me look good,
that makes bln look good. I want Blend to be on.
I want him to go on and be successful. And
when people look at their tee first profile, they're going

(55:17):
to see previously ran at Blynn College. Like that's what
I want on their tee first.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Profile, Coach, is there anything about blind that we haven't covered?
That you want our audience to know.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
This may speak more towards parents or other coaches, but
doctor Hensley is the chancellor here at Blynn. She is
absolutely amazing. Just as the overall person that makes all
the decisions with Blinn College. She is very supportive of athletics.
She has been very supportive of adding the cross country

(55:52):
program here. And this is where I say to parents,
like you can talk to some really good coaches. There's
a lot of really good coaches that in really bad
situations because of their administration above them. And so, like
I said, that has been just a want like such
a pleasant surprise and just been an amazing Here is

(56:12):
the support from administration, not just my athletic director, but
the person above my athletic director as well.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Rich.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Do you have anything else for Coach before we get
in the final four?

Speaker 2 (56:24):
I mean I could talk, I could talk Daniel's running formula,
and then I actually I do have one more yes
before we get in the final four. Coach, you mentioned
you love devouring coaching books and coaching literature. You mentioned
some of the stuff with Daniels and co uh and literard.
Do you have a favorite training manual or training book?

Speaker 1 (56:45):
I mean, I do consider Daniels kind of the Bible,
though I probably haven't opened it up in a while.
Though I read Running to the Top by Lydyard, which
you know is a very simple approach when you look
at it. But that was probably the first book that
I really read that piece together training that I went, oh, okay,
I understand how all this flows, the periodization that he

(57:06):
put together, and people have modified it. But I take
a lot of pride in and the athletes running their
best when it matters the most at the end of
the year. And like I said, I think that was
really kind of established with Lydyards. So those are kind
of the the two big ones.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Cool, thank you, I'm just looking over here. I'm bye.
I've actually have a running the Lidiard Way, so that's
the different version. But I scored that at the bookstore
in Leadville Gym. I don't know, so.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Interesting story and I got a bunch of stories. So
I actually have two books with Arthur Lydyard's autograph in it,
and he dated them and they are literally dated the
day before he passed away. So he was in Houston
and he gave a lecture at one of the hotels
conference rooms near one of the IEH the airport in Houston,

(57:54):
and I got most of my team in a van
and we went. I was like, we're going to go
listen to this guy and he was, you know, he's
old at that time, and very good lecture, and he
autographed the books. And then the next day I actually
think he was in Huntsville State Park part of an
ultra marathon, just like helping. I may be slightly wrong
on that, but yeah, he ended up passing away the

(58:14):
next day in Houston, and so those are one of
my all time favorite possessions. I also have and I
posted these with doctor Daniels passing away recently, but I
have his autograph and some words of encouragement on the
first two editions of his books that I have, and
then the third autograph that I have that I cherished
a lot is from John McDonald and I got that

(58:37):
when I was a sophomore in college. I saw him
at the Texas Relays and ran up to him like
a little fanboy and was like, I had just this
little notebook paper and I was like, can I have
your autograph? And he was with Alis Stair Craig at
the time, and he turns and he goes, this is
the guy's autograph that you really need. So I have
a piece of paper that has John McDonald and Alistar's
Craig's autograph on it. That So those are my three

(58:59):
three big coaching cherishes right there.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Oh that's amazing. I had I don't know, I've lent
it to someone and I never got it back. But
I had Joe V. Hill's autographing his training manual, and yeah,
I'm kicking myself. I was told by a coaching mentor
a long time ago he said two things. You don't
ever lend people as CDs and books because you'll never
get them back. Well he was right about the book.

(59:23):
CDs don't really exist anymore. But I learned my lesson
and I don't lend out books unless I'm gifting them
to people.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
These days, it's probably a good policy.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Yeah, coach, I do have one other thing, one thing
we need if you got time, I got plenty of time.
One thing we didn't touch on is and if we did,
I'm sorry, but is there dorms there? What as far
as like the living facilities, cafeteria things like that. Can
you just speak on that real quick?

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Yeah, there's quite a few dorms on campus, and they
come in different levels. We have like dorms that are
run by Blend that their apartments like you have your
own bedroom, like there's a kitchen in them. So there's
very nice dorms from that perspective. We also have like
traditional dorms, like a sweet style, and this is kind
of the primary ones where the athletes. The most of

(01:00:11):
the athletes stay where you have a roommate and then
you have a bathroom that you share with two other people.
We also have some dorms where I do have a
few of the cross country runners and basically everybody has
their own private bedroom and then they have a common
there's four bedrooms attached and then there's a common limiting
area to two bathrooms. So there are a lot of
different dorm options here at different levels, just depending on

(01:00:34):
the situation I do have. We do have an athletic
dorm Melcher Hall, where that is are women's dorms, so
women's cross country, when volleyball, women's basketball, softball, soccer are
all in there, so it's kind of an athletic storm.
The dorm where men's cross country stay is kind of
a small house type dorm but the men's basketball team

(01:00:55):
is in there. The athletic director here is the head
men's basketball coach. So I took that as a good
sign that, you know, he trusted me in the culture
of my athletes to put him in the same dorm
with his basketball players.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Sorry I left that out during the podcast, but that's
one thing we like to address for any potential recruits
so they can listen to this and get all the
fine details. First fun or four question I have for you.
Are you a coffee drinker? No?

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
All right, I can't stand it. I only drank coffee
twice a year, and it would be when i'd go
hang out with my grandfather before he passed away. And
like every small town in this area, every old man
goes to the coffee shop at five thirty in the morning,
and so I would go with him, and I just
I had to drink coffee because everybody else was and
I wasn't going to be the only person not drinking coffee.

(01:01:45):
But it was terrible the whole time.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Do you do caffeine or no caffeine?

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Yeah, I'm trying to wean myself off a diet coke addiction.
So that's been where I usually try to get my caffeine.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Okay, all right, Well, if it makes you feel any better,
You're not the only coach out there with a soda
or diet coke addiction.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
It's it's almost like an anxious, like nervous reaction sometimes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
I mean we've had a couple as of late that
are Mountain Dew fanatics, So don't worry about it, coach.
Do you have any daily practices or ritual as you
do on a regular basis to show up as the
strongest version of Jesse Parker?

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
I just work all the time. I don't know if
I have any Like I'm very routine in our practice
structure when I wake up. My dog is very keen
on my routine first thing in the morning. He knows
exactly what's going on, but I don't. I'm not superstitious
really in any way, So I don't think I have
any like specific routines. It just kind of depends on

(01:02:57):
what's required of that day. I do think that's what
I'm joy about the job is every day is a
little bit different.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Okay, what kind of dog do you have? And what's
his name?

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
His name's Jackson. He's probably about eight or nine. He's
he's a mutt. He's a rescue so I don't know
exactly what he is, but he's some sort of terrier
mix rat. Everybody thinks he's a jack Russell. I think
he may be a little bit more rat terrier. But
he's a little spoiled, anxious little terrier that follows me

(01:03:26):
around everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
That's amazing. We had a dog named Jackson Jim.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
Yes we did well. We grew up on Jackson Street,
so that was the name of the dog. Coach. What
are you listening to right now? Music? Podcast audio books
are every day anything.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
I listened to so from a podcast perspective, and I've
listened to these guys for It's actually not a running podcast,
but it's an NFL sports betting podcast. R Jay's Dream podcast.
So I listened to that one pretty routinely because it
gets me out of like obsessing about running all the time.
From a music perspective, I'm actually I'm a big hip

(01:04:06):
hop I love hip hop music. I'm a big fan
of Kid Cuddy, Kevin Gates. Yeah, so I think that's
something that would surprise people. I think most of the
athletes when they come here, they start listening. You know,
they listen to the music that I'm playing at practice
and we play the clean version of everything. But I

(01:04:29):
think that kind of surprises people to begin with it.
I'm a huge fan of Houston hip hop as well,
like just growing up in the areas.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
So, Coach, two of my biggest gets as a little brother.
I am a Kevin Gates guy and I'm a Mac
Miller guy. And when I try to hip rich to them,
and he was like, no, I'm not with no, no way.
And then slowly but surely throughout the years now he's
sending me Kevin Gates and Mac Miller herself all the time.

(01:04:58):
So that's my a little dab.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Yeah. No, I like I said, I have been been
a fan for a while and it's probably one of
those hidden things that you wouldn't recog You wouldn't think
when you recognize or look at me.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Right, I'm here for it, coach, last one we got
for you to close out. It's a lighthearted one. Maybe
it's a unique food item, maybe it's a specific beverage.
We know how we have some lots of coaches that
are either golfers or fishermen. Do you have a guilty pleasure,

(01:05:35):
and I watch a lot of football.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
I watch a lot of NFL, like that is what
I like. That is my escape from from work and
from running. So that's probably my guilty pleasure, just in
all facets.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
So are you a best Boys fan? Are you a
Texans fan? Is it something out of state that you've
gotten better?

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
So I have two football loves and I feel cursed.
So obviously a Dallas Cowboys fan. I live in Dallas,
in like inner city Dallas in the nineties when they
were winning Super Bowls. But my mom's side of the
family is all from Western New York, and we lived
and they're from north Tonawanda, which is near Niagara Falls

(01:06:14):
in Buffalo, and so I grew up a Bills fan.
So the first two Super Bowls the Bills lost. We
lived in Western New York and I'm a you know,
kid in elementary school, and so I love the Bills,
but they lose the Super Bowls. We moved to Dallas
after their second Super Bowl loss, which is when Dallas
gets hot and goes and plays the Bills in the
Super Bowl. And I just thought whatever team I rooted

(01:06:37):
for growing up was just automatically in the Super Bowl.
And it's been a long time since then. So those
are my two loves, the Cowboys and the Bills.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
So yeah, okay, okay, must be uh the lean more
towards Buffalo or more towards Dallas these days?

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Right right now? Buffalo?

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Buffalo, Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
Now, Buffalo. Though I love Josh Allen. He fits the
culture of Western New York so well, and so do
Sean McDermott, and they just I think that's something I'm
not touched before we go, like building a culture like
you embrace the community and the people that are supporting you.
That's one of the things I've tried to do here
at Blynn is like build a program that represents this
community well. But I think that's what you see with

(01:07:20):
all successful programs, the Steelers, the Bills, you know, any
of these. I think BYU you look at the University
of Colorado, they all embrace their culture very well.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
Coach, thank you so much for your time this evening.
We greatly appreciate your time, and I can't wait to
follow the team at Nationals and beyond this year because
I know you got big things going on.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
I love the podcast, guys. Thank you very much for
this opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Coach, it was an honor and a pleasure to get
to know you this eveson and get to know a
little bit more about your backstory and what everything that's
going on at Blynn. We will have a Blend banner
on our wall with all our other junior college friends
and we'll be rooting for you and Fort Dodge both
for the cross country championships and for the half marathon
Championships a few days later.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
Appreciate it, guys.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
All right, ladies and gentlemen. That is coach Jesse Parker
from Blynn College. We do appreciate his time this evening.
Make sure you go check those links in the show notes.
Give the Buccaneers a little bit of love. Let them
know the area bro sent you. That is all for
us this week. We do greatly appreciate you tuning in.
We hope you have a great rest of your weekend
and enjoy your weekend. We will be back next week.
We're lacing them up and getting back on the cross

(01:08:34):
country course. We'll be back here on Monday night with
Chase Engelstead from Snow Community College out in Utah. We
heard coach Isaac Wood mention them and then On Wednesday evening,
we're gonna be talking to coach James Minaj from Ranger College,
so we'll see you next week. Have a great weekend.

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EP400 — Coach Jesse Parker (Blinn College XC/Track): Rebuilding a NJCAA Contender, Culture, & the JUCO Advantage

Episode Transcript

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EP400 — Coach Jesse Parker (Blinn College XC/Track): Rebuilding a NJCAA Contender, Culture, & the JUCO Advantage