In The Huddle
The world of US college sport is both expansive and exciting, and international student-athletes are signing up in their droves for their shot at a scholarship opportunity.
In The Huddle is the creation of Study & Play USA, widely regarded as the GO TO experts in facilitating the best possible outcomes for all stakeholders in this industry: US college coaches and recruiters, local high schools, families of student-athletes and most importantly the student-athletes themselves.
So as you jog on the treadmill, drive to work, school or training, tune in to hear from industry leading experts, US college coaches, parents and student-athletes and learn how to best approach this pathway to maximise your opportunity and set yourself up for your most successful life.
In The Huddle
EP#55: The Customer vs The Explorer: College Recruitment with Cloud County Community College Track/XC Coach Drew Mahin
This podcast episode dives deep into one of our most frequently requested topics: Junior College, also known as JUCO or NJCAA.
Coach Drew Mahin from Cloud County describes the recruitment process in a way for everybody to understand: are you approaching this as a customer or an explorer? Coach Mahin talks about rejection directing you to your next path, success stories of his athletes post Junior College, the amazing cultural diversity on his track/xc team, life in small town Kansas and how Junior College coaches assist their athletes to find their right fit after 2 years.
This episode is a great conversation starter for families and athletes from any country to reflect on their approach to the US college recruitment process.
In the Huddle was created to give student-athletes, parents and coaches an inside look at the journey through US college sport and all that comes with it the demands, the experiences, the excitement and the opportunities available to our student-athletes from around the world. Study and Play. Usa facilitates a comprehensive, customised approach for student-athletes and families for their whole journey, from their high school preparation years right through to US college graduation.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of In the Huddle. I am your host, claire Mulligan. Back again for another episode. Thank you very much for taking time out of your day to listen, whether you're walking your dog, whether you're doing the dishes or going for a run. We're very excited that you're joining us today for In the Huddle we have a special guest today, coach Drew Mahan from Cloud County in Kansas. This is a junior college located in Kansas and Coach Drew is entering his 13th season as the assistant cross-country and track coach. Welcome, coach Drew. How are you guys doing? Good, good Early for us, a little bit later for you today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's about 4 pm, so we're nearing the end of the day here in Kansas, so it's nice to be able to join you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome, it's 7 am here here and we're very excited to start our day with a great podcast. For those of you who don't know much about junior college, track and field and cross country, this will be a really exciting episode, and for those of you who, in general, are very much looking forward to learning about junior college and different sports, this is a great listen for you as well. So we'll hop right into it, coach Drew, with junior college in general, why do you think? A lot of people don't know much about junior college, whether that's international students, or even some Americans don't have the full picture of what junior college is.
Speaker 3:I think that mostly the media that is covered in the United States of course covers the major sports with funding and financing with basketball, american football. Baseball gets more play notoriety, get some recognition out there, because there's a lot of alumni that are competing for all different types of countries at the Olympic level, receiving medals and having opportunities to make that a known thing. Also, as we produce such great opportunities to move on, that the next group gets to take more credit for the development that we get to have. Just like junior highs are very unknown in the American system, the high schools get more credit. The colleges then get more credit.
Speaker 3:So we are not by any means making millions of dollars in this world. We have a great opportunity to open up doors, but again, we're not the end of the road. So I think that's why it's a well-hidden secret across all different types of countries that number one the opportunities exist, but it's hundreds and hundreds of these opportunities exist throughout the country. It's not just a pocket of Kansas or Florida or New York. There's a lot of opportunities and just mostly money.
Speaker 3:I think everybody is trying to get to what they know and maybe it's through web sources like ESPN news services, the Associated Press, twitter, facebook, instagram whatever's popular amongst those sources tends to play really well with the world scene, and the world is getting smaller, which helped us a lot in recruiting during my last 13 years here at Cloud. If it wasn't for the social media scene, we would never have the amount of international students that we do have, so we've had 12 different countries represented last year alone, and there's no possible way we would have that kind of an impact worldwide if it wasn't for controlling our own information on our own website and then like three other platforms.
Speaker 2:So wow, that is a huge amount of countries represented, because you're saying your team is about 50, 60 kids and that's 12 countries in that amount of students right and it's.
Speaker 3:It's kind of unique countries like Papua New Guinea. We had a girl run at the Olympics this last couple months in the 100-meter dash, leonie Boo. She set the Papua New Guinea national record in the 100, I believe a 4x1 as well as possibly 4x4. The year before we had Leroy Kamau. He went to the World Championships to represent PNG and they were both flag bearers at those ceremonies Championships to represent PNG and they were both flag bearers at those ceremonies. We had a Japanese slash Australian pole vaulter that was a national champion for us and now she's at Louisiana Raging Cajuns as a Division One school jumping. This year we just got in Talia Leinert who does hurdles and multis in her first semester from Australia.
Speaker 3:But unique countries like Tunisia, egypt, morocco, nigeria, ghana, south Africa, zimbabwe, probably five or six different Caribbean countries. We've had Canada, germany, the Netherlands, sierra Leone odd countries that you wouldn't necessarily consider track and field powers. They're underdeveloped talents in terms of the worldview of track and field. It's not all just from Jamaica and all just from Kenya. It's many different countries of different backgrounds and specialties and events. So I think that's unique that we're finding other areas of the world to get into and make those connections with federations, high schools, local clubs and kind of a grassroots level of support, one of those people that comes over. They kind of become flag bearers or representatives of their own community and trailblazing a way forward in education and athletic opportunities and just to be able to open doors for others behind them. I think that's what's been really cool to see the bigger impact they make in their own communities in this journey.
Speaker 2:That's great. That's such an awesome opportunity for people that are from different countries to come together in Kansas and experience that huge range of different backgrounds, cultures, meeting new people. Yeah, that's really, really interesting compared to maybe a track roster of all people from that state or that geographical region. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 3:That's really interesting. We have eight different states represented and then every division of 1A through 6A. In Kansas there's six divisions, mostly because it's such a spread out state with low population. There's only 2.8 million people in Kansas. That is the size of the Dallas metro area. So you have to travel two to three hours to get to either side of our state and we're in the middle. But when you have a small population, we have 40 college track and field programs in a small population state.
Speaker 3:If everybody tried to fill the rosters with only Kansas athletes, we would be very limited to like 20, 30 kids on our whole team, because the number of seniors that want to choose that sport and then that are a right academic fit for us and the programs we offer the pool just keeps shrinking and shrinking, and shrinking.
Speaker 3:So we have to reach out of state. Whether it's the Midwest, whether it's New York, texas, colorado, we do have a lot of diverse kids, but they're here for different reasons and I think that that's really important to understand is there's all different levels of academics, there's all different levels of athletics and then there's different values of cultures, different demographics that people value. If we had 10,000 students and then 12 countries on our team, there'd probably be way less connections within our own team of building those bonds. Since we are on a smaller campus of five to 600 students, it's way easier for us to build those bonds, go through this awkward transition together with other people that are making that transition, and then it's like a lifelong relationship has been built because we get to share more opportunities in everyday life.
Speaker 2:So so what do you guys do for your team as bonding and what do you do outside of training? I've heard you say on another podcast that you guys like to do beach volleyball as a team and things like that. So what kind of stuff do you guys do together?
Speaker 3:well, like tonight, there's a home volleyball game and that will bring in a really big part of the student population on our campus. Basketball is huge. On campus. There's intramurals and they play, I think, 20 or 30 different activities and sports throughout the year, whether it's softball, baseball, soccer, three on three soccer, so basketball tournaments, wiffle ball, pickleball, volleyball, like they try to do anything and everything to fill in their schedules with free time. Of course there's different video games and things that some people would choose to do e-sports, but we have clubs, groups, organization.
Speaker 3:We have an international student organization with like 60 members on our staff faculty members, staff members, athletes, just general students. They're very involved and we see each other more often than a normal campus. It's not like we have four buildings all spread out across two or three miles. We have one building with four levels and you'll see people going back and forth to meals, to the training room, to the weight room. You'll see them at the advisement center.
Speaker 3:Being able to connect with all different people on our campus is probably the secret to us having a good culture and a good team. We see problems within hours and days being fixed. We don't have problems and issues linger for weeks and months without being known. You know, I think that we can't avoid each other and it's good and bad. But we deal with problems faster and we recognize the good things, the positive things, more often and we see the light when it's there and we see it when it's not as well. So as a team we've had our students kind of take that ownership of.
Speaker 3:We enjoy these activities, but I don't know the freshmen and that bothers me. So the sophomores this year have started to bring in once a week ultimate frisbee, once a week a movie night, once a week a potluck dinner and everybody gets together and have a barbecue. It's really hot in August when they first come back on campus so we have to be aware of not putting them out into dangerous situations. And then when it gets cold, there's sometimes sledding involved and snow activities, which is always fun Snowman competitions. As it gets later into the spring semester we get really busy with competition, so they might choose to do things that are more away from track and field and competition, just to be able to be stress free for an hour or two with their teammates. So it's pretty easy to do. In a small community we have a lot of things that are close by, within walking distance, or easily involved with the students.
Speaker 2:So I think, for people listening.
Speaker 2:I want to touch on the fact that you said if there's an issue or something that comes up, it's solved within hours.
Speaker 2:I think that's really important for people who have this idea in their mind that they want to go to like a hundred thousand person university just because it looks cool. I think it's really important for people listening to think about what that actually means a smaller school versus a hundred thousand person school and I think a lot of people nowadays look at social media and Instagram and go, oh, that looks fun, so that's where I want to go. But I think it's really good that we have this podcast and that you're here talking to people about. This is what it's like being in a smaller community, and these are the benefits of being in a smaller community at a smaller school in general. So I think that's really good and that actually is a great segue into my next question, which is if someone says to you I don't want to go to a school in the middle of nowhere, or someone says that to me, what would your response be to that?
Speaker 3:I'm very biased because I came from a town of 300 people and many of our family members and extended family members lived in the same general vicinity, within an hour drive. When you have bad things happen in life which is a guarantee you know there's going to be sickness, illness, injury, struggle. We're going to make sure that track practice works. You and you're going to feel some sort of way at different points in the year and we understand that stress will build. But when you have no support, I don't care if you have a million dollars in the bank. If you're depressed, you're depressed. If you're injured and your purpose in life is only athletics, it's going to be very empty and very lonely here in America for that time period until you grow connections and bonds. When you come from a small community, you cannot hide, but if you mess up, there's 30 other people reminding you of that mess up. That social guilt is so powerful. But it's also important that when you do have those successes, that that's the new standard. Like they expect you to go to school, they expect you to graduate. I didn't know people that did not finish high school. I didn't know people that had divorce as much as a common thread as it is today in US society. I didn't know people that had drug abuse, alcohol abuse, abuse in general, Like everybody went to church. Everybody had this high standard of society in a small community. So it's kind of like the tide that raises all ships In a small area. We like to sell our nothing. The no expensive prices for goods and services, the no traffic, no crime experiences. The no traffic, no crime, no stresses and no worries. It's. It's a very slow, stress-free life on the weekends that can take part in supporting you in your academic and athletic journey, so you have time to breathe. If it literally took me an hour to get to a grocery store, deal with traffic, go back here. I probably would avoid a lunch if I had to at that certain time of the day, which would hurt me later on. I'd probably avoid certain people that it would be more difficult to get things done With us here. It's important that we give them room to breathe and grow but also put them in challenging circumstances that they can be supported. I make sure all my students have to know the teacher's first names and that's a very awkward conversation Like why do I need to know about my teacher's family? Because you're going to have some commonality that will make it more comfortable to talk to them when you feel like a failure. It's a guarantee you will have a struggle in college. There's new five months of your life that you've never had to make a hundred decisions in a day what to eat, what to change into before practice, how to deal with a roommate that has a boy or girl over an odd hour, how to deal with somebody that's sick, how to deal with yourself when you're sick. It's all very overwhelming, unless you're okay with sharing your issues with other people when we can identify those issues really quickly.
Speaker 3:A teacher can send me an email saying hey, you know, Johnny just seemed really off this week. You might want to check on him. Or Courtney seems really sad. Do you know if they had a breakup or a family member that passed away? I want to check on them. Or it was their birthday. I'd like to do something special for them, which is really cool when they actually build those bonds with people that really show an interest and care and then they check up on them as alumni. They check up on them as they move to their next school and then be able to cheer them on in life, not just only in athletics and academics. So that's a really important process for us to build that trust first. Then we get to finally mold them into good athletes.
Speaker 2:I really got a bit warm inside and warm and fuzzy when you were talking about all of that, because I think that that approach to the student body at a university is not the norm and I think for everyone listening all those examples that you just gave, is not the norm at big, large institutions, where you're in a class of 600 people in a lecture and the professor has no idea if there's people from different countries in the room or not, or if there are 600 people from the local town or not. They just have no idea. So I think it's really, really cool to hear you talk about the differences of how those professors really know your kids.
Speaker 3:And it's kind of like a small business. We're trying to treat everybody like a return customer or like great alumni as they're already here. If we don't have alumni, we have no real selling point to the rest of the world. Our best marketing and recruiting tool has been our alumni sharing their story with five other people and then they follow their path, and then they follow their path. Or we have other coaches on our staff that have been here for 43 years and 48 years and I'm the third longest one here In junior college.
Speaker 3:That's a very long time. A decade is a long time. Most coaches go to junior college to get their feet wet, learn, grow, take on responsibilities, move up to be a head coach and then they bounce to a division. One school Florida State's head coach just got hired recently. He was a former Barton County coach in our conference. He just hired two other junior college athletes that have been through the system as well and they moved their ranks up. Nebraska just hired a sprint coach. Three years ago he was a junior college coach.
Speaker 3:There's so many great connections that feed us to the bigger levels, but their job is not my job. Their job is much different. At Division I now, with funding, with scholarships, with restrictions, with the NCAA, that their world is much different. In terms of the communication and the connection you can have with a student athlete, they are very limited eight hours a week, sometimes 20 hours a week. Sometimes you might only coach eight people. I get to coach 60, and I get to know their lives, I get to know their families, I get to know their pathways and I get to help them grow into their next opportunities, their pathways, and I get to help them grow into their next opportunities.
Speaker 3:But that's what's so strange in this track and field and I guess education world is the bigger campuses you go to. The insanely harder job it is to make a human connection and that's really what's going to determine whether you're successful or not is whether or not you can communicate problems, issues, circumstances, challenges, injuries and growth and expectations. If I don't have a relationship with my boss, I probably don't work very long at whatever job I'm in. You know I couldn't imagine only talking to my wife once per day and us being a successful team with our family at home. So these are skills that they're going to use in marriages. They're going to use in the business world. They're going to negotiate contracts with houses, cars, like it's so much more about life here than it is about track tracks like the one or two percent of our day. That's awesome, and everything else is the real secret to success here.
Speaker 2:So We've also seen lots of athletes start the recruitment process a certain way and then really grow and learn and develop as people in the recruitment process because, like you were saying, it's a lot of communicating and getting to know adults, talking to adults way more so for some people than they ever have before. And then they get to college and I've seen a big change with them at college as well. So it's yeah, it's really cool to watch the journey and I think for some of us on staff, we see these athletes as 16, 17 year olds and then they go through the recruitment process, go to junior college, go to their second school and then graduate and they come back to Australia, whether that's for a holiday or to move permanently back and we're like wow, wow, it just it's been amazing.
Speaker 3:I joke that I get to coach 13th graders because we have 12th graders and they're just not that far removed. They just haven't had to make those decisions yet. And we really do. I secretly I'm not, you know, some crazy coach that loves problems and issues, but once we finally have somebody have an injury and they've tried to do it their way or they have a bad test, finally it's like now they're going to listen, they finally get that they can't do it on their own and all great challenges are worth being shared and all great successes are worth being shared, but you're taking my job away from me and the instructor's job away from them if you don't use them as a resource. You know, if you want to make a coach better for you, you demand more out of me. You show up more often, you talk to me more often. That's how you increase my value as a coach. You can make me better for you. Those, those iron sharpening iron or diamonds, cutting other diamonds. That's the only way that true growth happens is when they take that ownership and that accountability in this process.
Speaker 3:I chose to be here. This is the position I'm in. How will I get out? I don't know the route, so I need to ask for help. That's the hardest thing any freshman has to do here and into the next schools. If it was all perfect and they could pass classes online and they could just follow a training plan, there'd be no purpose for me as a coach. I could just create a plan AI. Here's your eight-week plan, 12-week plan, send you your results and coach you over a Zoom call once a week. But that's not how humans work. We do coach humans, not just robots that you plug in a time, you plug in a workout, you plug in academics and then out comes this beautiful product. It's messier than that and life is messy and that's why we have a purpose bigger than this.
Speaker 2:So I think it's good for everyone listening to hear you talk about that kind of stuff, because I don't think it's talked about as much in the recruitment process and also when you're at college.
Speaker 2:A lot of of as you know and as we were talking off air is all the instagram and social media showing all the really wonderful day in the lives and all the vlogs and all the the great, amazing things and everything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's good to hear you talk about the challenges people face and generally how you're there to help and how your staff is there to help and the teachers are there to help, and even people listening like, if you're working with a company like us or you're working with a mentor, someone through the recruitment process, we're in your corner, we're cheering you on, we're there for you and encouraging you and helping you. And it's interesting to see how different people go about the recruitment process from our end and watching the wide, wide range of how people either take this opportunity to speak to college coaches and do recruiting and go yes, I'm going to get everything out of it, I'm going to try really hard, I'm going to give it my all and then other people are like sort of kind of doing it, and are confused when they're not getting the results that they thought they might be getting, and are confused when they're not getting the results that they thought they might be getting.
Speaker 3:Are you judging success based on objective goals or subjective goals? Can you actually measure support or not? Maybe it's financially, maybe it's academic, maybe it's time spent on athletes and one-to-one relationships, but for a large majority of people they cannot put a measurement on success and what it meant to them to be fulfilled in this path. The higher up you go in college athletics, the more business minded that it's going to be. Coaches will change jobs financially. They will change jobs for status, for moving up in the ranks.
Speaker 3:You could be left out to dry. You could have the world's best pole vault coach at the most beautiful university in LA and all of a sudden that coach leaves to become a head coach somewhere else and you're stuck with a coach that knows nothing about your event and it's a challenge. But the higher up you go, the more pressure that you signed up for, the more business minded that people are going to be about result driven success versus anecdotal results or fulfilling your, your goal as a leader or as a bigger cog in the wheel of that success. You know, too many times the reason somebody signed up for a school ends up being nowhere near the reason why they left.
Speaker 2:Mm. Hmm, yes, totally, totally, totally agree with that. To segue into another topic, we were speaking off air, and this one of my favorite topics is we're speaking off air about the pathway for junior college athletes after junior college, and I think we talk about it a lot here at Study and Play, about the really great opportunities that can happen after junior college, and I think some people say that that just think it's us just kind of saying it, but I would love for you to explain the athletes that have moved on from Cloud County and in general, that there's lots of athletes that are coming from junior college that represented their country at the Olympics as well as just generally. We tried to get a lot of stats out during the Olympics about the different divisions and different people that represented their country, so I'd love for you to elaborate a bit on that.
Speaker 3:So since I think 2008, we've had four different Olympians at Cloud, one from Haiti that grew up in the United States but his mother had the dual citizenship, so that opened up an avenue for him. Another athlete competed for the United States, but he was originally born in Kenya. Bernard Ketter came here as a distance runner and steeplechase athlete my first year as a coach and we joke that, or I joke with him that I grew up as a coach with him. But I told him I don't know everything, but I will learn and I'll fight and I'll go through this journey with you. We'll make mistakes, but we will learn together. And now he's got children and I've got children and we got to meet up in Colorado Springs. He was able to attend the Tokyo Olympics under the US team. So he actually joined the US Army after Texas Tech University and an all-American career there, with the unknown that he could compete professionally long term and there was no promises made when he joined the Army. Luckily, he was able to develop. Over the course of the next eight years he's been able to go to two world championship teams and the Olympics. Once, for the steeplechase, made the finals in Tokyo. It's just a great story of never. He didn't even have a school record in the steeple chase. He didn't even win a national title in Division I, but yet he made the finals of the Olympics because he was able to go through more challenges and continue to grow at every stage of his life.
Speaker 3:Rajendra Campbell and Leonie Boo went to the Paris Olympics. Rajendra was actually the bronze medalist and Jamaican national record holder in the shot put. He does not have our shot put record here at Cloud. When he came he didn't even do the spin in the shot put, which is more efficient, he did the glide. He was a way better discus thrower when he first came. He never scored a single point for us at the national championships in junior college. When he went to Division II he finally developed even more and he won two national titles in two different events in the throws.
Speaker 3:It took about seven or eight years of development as a human and maturity and growth as an athlete to get to that level. They don't realize this is such a long transition into professional athletics, let alone representing your country. He's still unsponsored at this point before the Paris Olympics. It's just amazing to see the level of endurance with work ethic, with mental strength, with overcoming adversities, financially, injuries, grades. He was an athlete that needed to go to a junior college, first because of academics, then division two because of academics, but yet he's going after a master's degree now and that's that's a lifelong growth.
Speaker 3:You know, when we are able to help an athlete find their next best fit, that probably fulfills me more as a coach than any number of our national champions we've ever had, because they're finding that next support system that's right for them and that growth. They might not have been ready for a division I school when they first came to us, but maybe they find the next right fit in community environment, academics. Maybe they became a better student, maybe they became a better piece of the next team they're a part of, but they weren't that person when they showed up and they had to change drastically to become that person when they left. Other athletes finally get their eyes opened up to. Division II is so much better fit for me because of this and this and this. Maybe it's the cost, maybe it's the academic balances. Some of them have to go into nursing school. Very few Division I schools are going to spend a full scholarship on somebody, so half their time can be spent in nursing classes and clinicals. Division II schools may be more balancing in terms of academics and athletic shared goals. Maybe some of them find a better fit with a small Christian school within any high school.
Speaker 3:We get to see a lot of different varieties of schools because we do compete against every four-year institution in our area. Often every indoor meet, cross-country meet, outdoor meet that we go to until the post postseason starts, we're competing against all different divisions of Division I, division II, nai and then even post-collegiate athletes that are professionals will start to compete in some of those meets as well. They get exposed to all levels. They get to see coaches reacting badly to a drop baton. We get to see coaches hugging their athletes and crying with them when they have a huge success and qualify for nationals. They get to evaluate coaches as much as the coaches are evaluating our team every walk through that meet.
Speaker 3:We also have the best opportunity in Kansas anyway for so many junior colleges being so close together. There's 16 that have track and field. It's the toughest conference in the country for junior college. Many coaches from bigger conferences will come into Kansas for two to three days and just make their rounds in recruiting and it allows us to all capitalize on that bigger piece of pie. We had coaches from South Florida, miami, texas, minnesota, nebraska, kansas State, kansas, north Texas. Every big conference you can think of has come to Kansas in the last few years. And they step foot on our campus and get to see a freshman that nobody knew about. And who's this, who's this, who's this? Tell me about that girl. I just watched them at practice. Tell me about this kid in the weight room.
Speaker 3:They get to be engaged face to face with our athletes and that's very often the case where they get to know more about them. Finally, in the fall of their sophomore year and then in the spring they might cement some standards with performance or athletic achievement. But a large part of Division I recruiting is starting at freshman, sophomore, junior levels for the elites, and then there's a whole big group that's left out because their standards aren't there yet or the quality of their marks are not Division I ready yet for those bigger schools. That's where we serve a huge purpose of development, because they might be a 2-meter high jumper that needs to get to 210. They might be a 215, 800-meter girl that needs to drop their time to 206 to really make an impact. Today's landscape has changed even more, where the transfer portal is taking good quality student athletes at other institutions that have already handled this transition. They're not 18 with no experience. They are now 19, 20, 21 and proven. They can handle academics. They've proven they can handle the competition. They've made it to nationals at a D2 or NAIA or a small division one school and then they make the jump. When they're prepared, it's easier to invest in a proven commodity versus an unknown. That's where we get to solve the question marks. We get to paint on that new canvas at junior college and reestablish somebody's recruiting potential.
Speaker 3:We've even had situations where a girl came in a good long jumper, good hurdler. Her marks never improved, they got consistent, they got really consistent, but they didn't improve dramatically to get recruited. But her grades did, her attitude did, her work ethic did, her communication skills did, her leadership skills did. She became a new person but yet more consistent at the same times that she had in high school. That opened up more doors for her than she could have ever realized. If she would have blown up and had one good mark but that consistency still there, she would have gotten recruited to a school that would have probably put her in too much pressure too early and she probably would have crumbled at the wrong school that only focused on results. Instead, her consistency, her as a person, her as a student, opened up the doors to the right school and the right fit for her. That, later in life, made a bigger impact in who she was and who she married and who she surrounded herself in the community that she's in now.
Speaker 3:So I think those are the success stories that don't get the newspapers. They don't get to the Instagram. They don't get to, you know, the Twitter feeds, as much as we would like. We've had talented athletes, yes, but were they all good teammates? No, not all of them. Some of them needed to grow a lot when they left us, and they did eventually. Some of them needed to grow a lot when they left us, and they did eventually. So it's interesting to see who's who's open for those challenges when they do step on campus. Versus that sophomore year, do they really grow even more? I would hope that that athletes do not stay the same when they go to college Athletically, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, whatever. Your whole life has to change in order for you to be ready for that next challenge.
Speaker 2:So we're just a piece of that puzzle.
Speaker 2:I wish that everyone who's going through the recruitment process can hear that exact blurb that you just said, because I think that a lot of people try and make sense of the recruitment process and go, okay, well, I'm, I'm jumping the same height as this person, I'm running the same height as this person, I'm running the same time as this person, why are they getting recruited over me? And people really try and make sense of what's going on. But I think, especially for internationals that don't get the exposure, as a lot of the American kids, it's really important to understand that there's so many different pathways to get to where you want to go, and I think that that's that whole thing that you were just saying about all of the different benefits and reasons why junior college is important and why it exists and why it's such a great vessel for the next path. I want everyone in every single sport, to listen to that, because that is like music to our ears. I know our whole staff is going to be like yes, yes, killing it. Yep, no notes.
Speaker 3:The worst analogy I can give is if I met my wife when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, there's no possible way we would have ever gotten married. It took me later in life to find her.
Speaker 3:Thank God, because I was not prepared to be in that responsible world. Yet you know, and just the same as an athlete, if you're given this, this precious gift, and it's so delicate, but you don't go to sleep at night, you don't take care of it, you don't eat right, you don't take care of your injuries, you don't have the right mindset, you're chasing boys and girls and video games and you don't know what your major is, how are you possibly going to take care of that precious gift if you can't take care of yourself? And also within our team? We put a challenge on everybody. You are making our team better because of who you are. I don't care if you're in a boot and you're hurt, I don't care if you're sick that day and you can't compete. If you're on our team, you better make our team better, not just that you put up points, because you could put up points and you could ruin our team culture, but if you're on the team, the team should make you better and vice versa. You should make your coaches better. If you're not making me better, why am I hanging around you?
Speaker 3:As an athlete, anyway, you know, I think that growth has to be a challenge and it has to hurt in order to rip the bandaid and move on. Rip the bandaid, move on. Find the awkward moment, lean into it, move on. The faster we move on from those awkward moments and wreck the bicycle again and again and again. Little kids fall down every single day, at one year old, right, but nobody's ever told them just lay down and stop, stop falling down. It's always get back up, keep trying, get back up, keep trying.
Speaker 3:But we get to be adults and all of a sudden, the peers, the friend groups oh, if you're not going to start, if you're not going to be the superstar, you should quit. If you're not going to be good at that event, don't do it. If you're not going to be good at this, don't do it. Why do you keep failing at that? Don't do it. You know we avoid failure to save our pride way too much in this culture and we care about likes and we care about that validation. So finding validation through a process is so much different in this journey than it is finding a stat that says oh, I got a 4.0 GPA, I'm valuable. I bet in your interview process where you work at now, your GPA doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:I bet in your interview process, where you work at now, your GPA doesn't matter. I have a diploma on the wall that I haven't used for 13 years and I did one year of teaching. But those challenges help me. Nobody's going to put on my headstone my PR and the hurdles. Nobody's going to put on my headstone how much money I made. Nobody's going to put on my headstone of my GPA in high school. Nobody cares.
Speaker 3:Once you get in the real world, it's all about the impact you can make on others and how can you communicate through problems and issues and can I trust you? That's it. Life is so simple after that. But yet as a team we get lost in the stats, we get lost in the performances, we get lost in the world that really you're going to be upset 99% of the time and have one good PR every season. So really you're going to have one moment of success in that one event. But what's the other stuff worth, you know? So it's a long way to answer your question, but there's just so much more in life than just track. We just get to use that vessel to challenge and push people a little bit further and and to be more valuable in life than just track. We just get to use that vessel to challenge and push people a little bit further and to be more valuable in life too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like that and I like that long answer because I think it resonates with me, more so because of another podcast I did with a softball athlete and actually we talked about the danger of letting other people's opinions dictate your own future. And I have, I said to her in that podcast it's, it's interesting to watch people get paralyzed by the other opinions of people who sometimes they don't even know that well but they just want their path to look like it's amazing and the best and it's going to beat everyone. And that segues into something that actually happened at Australian cross-country nationals that we were recently at and we had someone come over to our table and said that their son was looking at coming to the US for cross-country and I said, oh, that's great, what's he looking to do? And she kind of had this impression that we she was only going to be sending him to an ncaa division one school and she was so flippant and so like, oh yeah, no, only ncaa division one, only tier one within division one. And I I smiled and I said, oh okay, wishing him all the best, like that's awesome, he's looking at going to the US.
Speaker 2:And she took a pamphlet and I got a bit sad because I was like there's so much more to the US college system than just division one and just tier one or rankings, or telling your friends that your son goes to a division one school and such and such is running here breaking this school record and representing this state and this country. I just yeah, it just made me a little bit sad because I'm like it's not about that. It's not about bragging to other people where you go and what you've done. It's so much more, like you were saying, about your journey and your experience there and being a better person and really getting along with your team and bringing your team up and yeah, so I really want people to listen to this episode and take away everything that they're taking away from you, but also making sure that, like I said in that other podcast, the danger of letting other people's opinions ruin your potential wonderful gem of a pathway that you might be on, I think is important.
Speaker 3:And to be proud of growth, like they don't see that every day, when you're climbing a mountain and you're looking at your feet, you only see what's right at your feet and you don't necessarily see everything until you finally have a pause and a break and you look behind you and see how far you've actually come in life. Being able to have those checkpoints and people to notice those changes in your life is important. I went to a school that was a division two school. I walked on for several years and I was on a small scholarship for several years. Never once did I ask that coach what's my value on this team? Never once did I get my butt ripped out for not attending class because I did skip some class. I think that accountability is what I was starving for from a high school student at a small school with, you know, 100 kids in my whole high school.
Speaker 3:I go to a college with 10,000 students now and I was overwhelmed with entertainment as a college student and I screwed around a lot. I would probably kick my own self off my own team if I had to coach me, but I guarantee you I would have changed my thinking really quickly if I would have noticed a coach, noticing that I was not living up to my potential and setting new standards in my head. But when there's 120 athletes on the team and I'm a walk on, what's my value? I had no clue. I was naive to find out that I have no value on the team in terms of scoring points. Until my junior year I didn't score a single point for the team at a conference meet. So that could be one level of success people are looking for. I got to score points or I got to get a scholarship.
Speaker 3:But to say, me and my head coach had a relationship? We didn't for five years until I told him I wanted to become a coach Really. After I've been there five years and been injured and went through my education stuff, he finally knew I wanted to be like him in a role. But we never had that relationship until the fifth year. Waste of rent, utilities, tuition, books, fees, blood, sweat and tears. To waste five years when I could have been in that profession right away and asking him questions immediately. So it's like we avoid conflict sometimes and growth at our own risk, where we should have just done it and ripped the band-aid and felt stupid for five minutes and then we would have been in so much better position of knowing where you stand in in the world, where you stand in a coach's eyes.
Speaker 3:But we try to pour, or pour into those student athletes so that they can come to us with friction. They can come to us with problems, they can come to us with. I don't think these workouts are going to get me fast enough, and then I have the stress of going home at night saying, okay, I got to call my friends that are more experienced in these events, that can get this kid to their goals and that they can make a real process that we can both grow from, which I really appreciate the athletes that trust us enough to fail forward with us and we can figure this out together. That's how I've grown into different event groups. We had a small school, get to work with all the track team. I can work with jumpers, sprinters, hurdlers, pole vaulters, multi-athletes, and then I'm also the head cross country coach and then the only events I don't really coach is the throws. So it gives me such diversity to small school where at a bigger school you might only have one person you communicate with, you might only work with that one throws coach only and you might never meet the head coach more than once or twice a semester. In passing, the relationship from the head coach to the athletes, from the supporting coaches and the other people At other bigger universities, it's interesting.
Speaker 3:They have a strength coach, they have academic support specialists, they have a director of operations that helps you organize travel. They might have an equipment specialist. They might have somebody for every area of your life. They have seven different people, but do those seven people speak the same languages? Probably not. Do they all communicate how you communicate? Probably not. Do they understand your mom's sick and you need some time? Probably not. Do they understand that you might be stressed out at different points? No, do they care? And sometimes they're paid for results, not your feelings. And having a smaller school, whether it's D1, d2, nai, juco we see, across the board, healthier relationships with multiple people, even when our athletes go on.
Speaker 3:I'm looking at Clemson. Well, we know they have good people that really care about them. So we would promote certain schools like them, or Texas Tech or Kansas State or this school we would recommend. This coach has a great personality for you because you're passionate, you're excited, you want to be held accountable. Another kid you probably want to avoid them because they're going to be on your butt 24-7. And you're going to think you're always in trouble. Where can you handle that fire that they're going to throw you into? Can you handle that environment that they're going to throw you into?
Speaker 3:Some students want to be at a big city and have all the nightlife.
Speaker 3:Other students would be possibly in trouble all the time or gaining weight because they're staying out too late and eating crap food all the time.
Speaker 3:You know we can see those obstacles ahead of them and help them understand those obstacles. We help connect them to other schools with emails, kind of basically a recruiting agency on top of what other people have already done to help them get here. We're another resource if they want it. If them and their family don't want to have us be as involved, we can be hands-off and just support you and be a cheerleader too. So it's all about how that student-athlete wants to be supported. Moving on, we do have other fields that are technical trades wind energy, solar energy. Some in nursing that they can get jobs right away leaving a two-year technical degree and they can find a job in America immediately and those doors do get opened up quite often, which is interesting. So there's different levels of success for us and different levels of success they can look at in the future, but we get to make that picture more clear and, with time, to breathe as well here at Cloud.
Speaker 2:That all sounds great, great, great, and I think that anyone who's listening to this podcast wondering about the process to move on to the next school, you gave a glimpse into how you can, as junior college coaches, best support students into that next transition to their next school.
Speaker 2:Because we get a lot of parents that actually say to us oh so if my son or daughter starts at a junior college, what is the chance that they actually will be able to transfer? And that's an interesting question to us because we know that as Americans I say we is like where I grew up everyone knows that junior college is designed for lots of different reasons and if you want to transfer, you'll be able to transfer. So it's interesting from now, living in Australia, where people think that there's junior college, doesn't always mean that you can transfer if you want to. And we're very much here saying if you have done everything that you need to do at junior college and you're looking for your next place, there's thousands and thousands of universities in the US that are not junior colleges that you can then transfer to.
Speaker 3:Honestly with countries like Europe and Australia and somewhat Asia. We're getting more and more students that are already NCAA qualifiers. That means they've gone through the NCAA Eligibility Center. They've proven their academics are substantial to get them into Division I, division II. It is no issue for them to find those schools. But they're here for a different reason. Maybe it's to develop their athletic ability. Our girls team last year had like 10 girls at 4.0, a team GPA of 3.5. The guys averaged 3.3 amongst like 30 guys. The classroom sizes are 12 to 15 students.
Speaker 3:It's really hard to be bad at school here because the accountability is always there. If you miss classes, I'll find out in the next hour. If you struggle in a class, I have access to all your grades. We check periodically and have meetings and study hall times. We have tutors. We have everything that a normal school would have. We just have better connections with people.
Speaker 3:What you see is the two pathways. Either they're academically eligible to go D1 and then they need a cost that's more affordable. They need an opportunity that's more realistic for their performances so far. Maybe they got hurt their senior year of high school and they couldn't compete. We get to reestablish their standings. Then the other pathway is they're not academically eligible immediately because of an English score, test score. Maybe their transcript has some holes in it or they're missing some prerequisites to get into the program that they want to go into. The only way our transfer credits don't work for another school is if you start in accounting and then halfway through your sophomore year you decide to go into biology, you're missing a ton of credits. You might graduate with a general associates or general studies associates and you don't get to go into the biology program you want right away for the school that you want right away. If you start in one program and you finish in that same program, whether it's sciences, pre-med, pre-engineering, maybe it's education, maybe it's nursing, maybe it's you know, renewable energy, those pathways are going to be very much the same at every level. Even if our kids get an associate's degree, it saves them some credits in that transfer process where they don't have to take maybe six to nine other electives because they already had an associate's degree coming in.
Speaker 3:Within the state of Kansas, every public school Division II, division I has to accept all of our credits that are gen eds. As long as they get a C and above, it's mandated that they're going to be able to transfer those credits within the state of Kansas. Many other states have surrounding state agreements. I think like the WUE states or like, if it's Texas, oklahoma, border states, they all would take most of the public education credits. Very few times do we see where a student transfers over and maybe it's one science class with a lab. They take four credits instead of five. That's the only difference that we've ever seen and it's very small instances. Luckily those students were on full scholarships when they left us, so it wasn't a big deal to take an extra credit here and there to make up for the gap. Usually we have good relationships with compliance officers at all these Division I schools, saying hey, this kid's visiting. Here's unofficial transcripts, here's what they're going to take next spring. Here's their graduation track and planning.
Speaker 3:I used to work in the advisement center. Coach Smith that works with us. He was an advisor for 30 years. We know way more than most of the Division I coaches do about the transfer process academically. Even so, we are another resource in that academic pathway as well. We can see problems before they ever exist on a compliance issue with NCAA. So as that landscape changes, it's becoming easier and easier to help students transfer because they've removed a lot of barriers in the last five to ten years.
Speaker 3:Anyway, students in Australia probably would not find our academics to be any more challenging than they would at any university. It's just we have a better time management process. We have a better stress management process. When it's a smaller community looking after your success, you have more eyes on your documents to ensure four people are looking at the same thing saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Versus me at a Division II school, I went through five years and only met with my advisor three times in person. I should not be the one making my decisions on my classes, because I was an idiot. You know, I had too many classes that didn't count for my graduation. I changed my major three times. I had no accountability to a single person on that campus and they just let me keep paying for classes because they wanted my money here. We want your money and we want to see you leave on time.
Speaker 2:So for those people listening who don't know what an associate's degree is, can you explain that?
Speaker 3:It's around 62 credits. So a typical class in college is around three credit hours. So that would be like a Monday, wednesday, friday one hour each day of those typical class days. A typical student is eligible for any competition level for us at 12 hours per semester, which is around four classes. So a full-time load is 12 to 16 hours typically. If you average 16 hours per semester, which is around four classes, so a full-time load is 12 to 16 hours typically. If you average 16 hours per semester and you pass all your classes, you end up with around 62 credits To get a degree.
Speaker 3:Here. We have general education requirements with math, english, science, speech, humanities, and then there's about half the credits that you would take in your certain field. If you're going to be a business major, you would dive into accounting and finance and marketing and advertising and intro to business entrepreneurship. If you're going to nursing, you would take anatomy and physiology, chemistry labs, bio you would dive into your core credits. Every university is going to require general education requirements and that's the broad scope of educating everybody in different values in the education requirements and that's, you know, the broad scope of educating everybody in different values in the education world. So it's no different than the general education requirements you take at Kansas State four-year school.
Speaker 3:To us, to a Division II school, to an NAIA school, there's no real big difference across that first group as a freshman and sophomore. It's not nine day different from a university setting in terms of the core curriculum that they teach. So, yeah, the degree I would say is around 120, 130 hours at most universities anyway. So we would take care of the first two academic years and the first two athletic years. They would still have extra eligibility depending on injuries and different things red shirting. Most of our athletes have two years remaining of cross-country or two years remaining of indoor track or two years remaining of outdoor track.
Speaker 2:Something I wanted to touch on was something that you actually brought up earlier about competing against lots of different kinds of universities while your athletes are at junior college. So we will say to families in Australia that a lot of the junior colleges will compete against four-year institutions for exposure. So can you talk a little bit about the track and the cross-country schedule that you set for the exposure for your athletes?
Speaker 3:So this year, for example, we'll have four open cross-country meets before we have regionals and nationals. Our cross-country qualifying standards are different for each institution. It's an open national meet. Every institution gets to say they have to average a certain time or finish in the top 15 or in the rankings or finish in the top three of their conference meet. So that's a little bit more fluid. But there's Division I, cross-country for junior college, division II and then Division III. D1 can give every amount of scholarship from $1 to a full scholarship. It's really flexible. Division II is limited to books, tuition fees only. That's the maximum but they could give any level between that. Division III is academic aid only and typically international students don't find themselves at Division III schools as often as they do D1 and D2, since we can offer athletic scholarships, most of the elite Division I junior college athletes end up being from other countries. There are a mixture of international athletes from all over in the distance races, sprints and then a few American athletes in the top 20, but it's a really big group of international students in the distance racing side when we get to indoor track or sorry, let's go back.
Speaker 3:Cross-country season starts in late August and we will compete through November for our national championships. We will not compete in indoor track until January and then usually we have about five to six indoor meets and we finish our regionals and nationals at the end of March every year. For indoor nationals we have a spring break shortly after that in March and then we transition into outdoor track in late March through middle of May for our outdoor national championships. The spring semester is 16 weeks and there's probably about 13 weekends of track and field for a typical athlete in the junior college setting. If you're in a Division I school, division II school or NEI school, they might have competitions even in December. For indoor track we cannot because of some of the rules with junior college. We can't add new athletes in January if we compete before January and December. So there's some unique things with junior college in terms of scheduling. We do not fly to many competitions unless it's outdoor nationals, indoor nationals, and we've been taking about 30 to 40 athletes to those competitions lately. So the majority of our team is having those experiences. At a national championships we will travel probably, you know, four or five different states between cross country, indoor and outdoor, so we get exposed to different environments, different weather, different levels of competition. We went to Wichita State D1 this last week. Next week we'll go to Nebraska, in two weeks we'll go to Missouri. So we're getting outside of the state of Kansas even really early on in indoor meets, outdoor meets and cross country throughout the season.
Speaker 3:At Division I you might see bigger travel but they would have to miss class on a Wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday sometimes for some of these big meets. So then you're doing a lot of online work. You're coordinating with academic tutors more often. We would typically keep our meet schedule to a two-day schedule that we can travel to in one day and compete and then be home that same night after the second day. It's less competition stresses, it's less on the kids in terms of recovery and health and training. So we manage our schedule a little bit more condensed than some of the other schools do at the higher levels.
Speaker 3:But again, the upper limits of Division I they might have 120 kids on their team, 100 kids on their team, but only a travel squad of 30 to 40. So the cost of the flights, the food, the equipment, hotels, meals, everything they're going to limit that to their travel squad or their conference squad. Not everybody gets to go on the big trips With us. We take everybody to every meet. We don't want to leave anybody behind. It's not like the walk-on is getting treated any differently than the scholarship to athletes, so that's a little unique with our level. The qualifying standards are set every year. So if you hit that standard and shot foot long, jump 800, 100, the first meet, your tickets punch to nationals. In division one they only take the top 16 indoors and then outdoors you have to qualify through a regional. So it's very different at those levels compared to us. We could have 58 kids in the 100 meter dash from all over the country that qualify in one event.
Speaker 2:Everybody will get the same opportunity to compete to be traveling with your team, really amongst your team and a part of your team. Are you happy to be potentially sitting on the bench and not coming to events and not coming to games? So yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 3:Yep, and how important are you to that team as a freshman? Sophomore junior, senior redshirt senior. As a freshman, every athlete is so much more valuable at our level than they would be at any other school. Unless you know they're just a U-20 champion in some respect. We still have elite athletes that can win a lot of competitions at these meets, which is awesome and it's exciting. But it's that level of involvement. Can you be a leader as a freshman? Can you find your niche? Can you follow people? Can you be driven? You know where is your best? Leader as a freshman, can you find your niche? Can you follow people? Can you be driven? You know where is your best fit as a person within the competitions, as well as what's the coach expect from you? Maybe you're not ready for those expectations, maybe you don't know about them until you get on campus, and then injuries might happen and you're thrust into the fire. So those, those roles, do change. But what are you prepared for as well?
Speaker 2:And what would you say, your favorite thing?
Speaker 3:is about coaching Australians Probably their interest in food. I think I get a very interesting view of what America feels like because we have so many international kids and I think all of them that we meet are so grateful for the experience and so appreciative for the experience and they want to go home with a small town Kansas kid. They want to go to Kansas City and see the big city life with another athlete during a different holiday. They're more open to trying and exploring and they're more brave than a lot of our own local kids are about getting out and experiencing new things. It's always with the food music what do you think of?
Speaker 3:American guns is always a hot topic or political issues, or Donald Trump is pretty popular and people trying to figure out what does he mean by this and this and this. So the differences in culture are very, actually small. When we talk about Europe, australia, america, we see a lot of the similar things. We might just be having different viewpoints and political stuff within culture, within religion, within, you know, education worlds, but to have different groups and religions and culture all blended together and somehow when they leave they're all crying, is pretty special here. So from the Australian group, I think it's. It's definitely the food topic gets hit on a lot, and then, uh, music and the and the always the accents. I love joking with them and messing with them about different things in Kansas, because they have no clue what they're getting into yet. So we try to set them up for some awkward moments with exchanges with teachers and different local people.
Speaker 2:So I hopefully you have some of the aussies that have taught you about that whole, like nah yeah nah yeah, I could not get my head around that. When I first moved to australia I was like what?
Speaker 3:are you talking?
Speaker 2:about. So something I'd like to end our podcast on is a question I I basically asked every single coach that I've interviewed, and it's one of my favorite questions to get answers from is in your opinion, what do you think are very common mistakes that you see recruits make in the recruiting process, regardless if they're an international or a domestic student?
Speaker 3:They try to talk like a customer versus like an explorer. I think if somebody is exploring a new area, a new adventure, a new world, if you're on vacation versus you're shopping, there are two different ways of thinking. If you're on vacation, you want to learn about how, what, when, where, where did this come from? What's the school about? What values do they have? How did you become a coach? How did you become this leadership position? What was your experiences in athletics?
Speaker 3:They want to know more about me because I'm the one communicating with them. If they're a customer, they're going to say what's my worth, what's my price? What do I get? Do I get the gear? Do I get the Nikes? Do I get the hoodie? Do I get this? Do I get my own dorm room? Do I get a fly? Do I get to go to the meets? Do I get to go to nationals? What do I get in exchange for my price tag? You know my efforts. What's my value Versus? How do you evaluate me? How would I fit into your program? What are you looking for in recruits? What are you looking for in people? What are you looking for in expectations of communication? As a student, what are the biggest challenges I could face. You know they don't want to necessarily ask about the stats. You can find all that online. You can find results.
Speaker 3:You can find price tags, you can find tuition rates, you can find scholarship opportunities. But ask more of the anecdotal evidence of, maybe, what challenges have brought you closer to your athletes. What struggles have you had as a coach? What are your goals as a coach professionally? Where do you want to be in five years? Flip every single question that coach asks you back on the coach.
Speaker 3:I think that ping pong effect with student athletes is really hard today. They can't play catch and rebound and throw it back. They answer the question and then they sit there or I ask them if they have questions. No, I'm good, I'm like I'm scared for you that you have no questions. This is I'm nervous for you because you have no clue what you're getting into.
Speaker 3:So I try to prompt them with different things of how do you define success? They have to answer more about themselves. If your parents could call me today and explain who you are, not what you do, I know what you do. You run fast, but who are you? Can you answer? Who are you away from athletics activities and academics? If you can avoid those things about telling me who you are, I got a better idea of who I'm coaching when those athletes start on that level.
Speaker 3:It's so much more fruitful conversations and real conversations. I can have an honest disagreement on your worth as an athlete in scholarships if I can honestly know who you are and you can take the advice and the heat of saying you know, at this time we don't know what our budget's going to look like, but I have $5,000 available. You're going to have to come up with A, B and C for housing because this is where you stand today, but if you grow to this athlete, we might be able to help you more. I love offering opportunities besides athletics that they can absorb debt with, whether it's academic scholarships, activities, groups, organizations. We have six track athletes out of 13 in the dorms that are RAs. Half of the RAs are track athletes because we recruit good leaders first.
Speaker 3:We recruit good people first. We recruit responsible people first. We recruit responsible people first. Then if they happen to be good in track, that's a bonus. But we have to have this first in order for them to survive academically, athletically, financially. So you know, I think that's the hardest thing a student athlete has to do in recruiting that. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. It's how do you find out who the people are you're dealing with versus just the stats? The stats don't matter as much as where you can grow and how you can grow within that organization.
Speaker 2:So you knocked that out of the park, I think the whole time I've ever been interviewing coaches for this podcast, that is the most succinct and clear and reflective answer I've ever heard. Because the customer versus the explorer that that is like phenomenal, as the youth would say nowadays, no notes killed it. I was. I was coaching some of my girls the other day and they said that to me and I was like, oh, this is a new, new phrase I might use, but that was, um, that was a really good way of explaining it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, explore versus customer, I'm definitely gonna explorers don't have to be right or wrong. You know, and that takes away the fear of not being fulfilled by this certain coach's response to you or being let down. You're not expecting anything, you're just trying to find out information. Being told no is not the worst thing. It's directing you to your next best path. But we're afraid of that rejection. Too many people are afraid.
Speaker 3:I am being told hundreds of times a year no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But most of those no's are by being ghosted on text or phone calls or WhatsApp. Most of those no's are me moving on, not the actual athlete writing a letter, sending an email, saying at this time you're not in my choices. I really appreciate your time, your energy. I appreciate getting to know you as a person. I can still be a cheerleader for those people. Those people can give me contacts in the future because they respected our time that we had together. There's nothing better for me than helping a student athlete find their best fit, and a lot of times they're not with us, and that's OK. But they're going to know somebody that might need us in the future anyway, and that's OK.
Speaker 3:There's more pie out there. There's more athletes out there. I can't take the bad ones. I can't take the wrong athlete for my program. Not every athlete's going to fit in every program and that's the problem most athletes don't realize you might statistically fit a program's needs but not fit that culture or that group. You might not be happy there. The worst thing I can do is sell this image of a school that it is not real and you're going to be miserable here. I don't coach hostages. I cannot approach hostages Like you have to want to be here. This has to be a privilege and an opportunity and being grateful. We can't work with prisoners, you know.
Speaker 2:It's a bad business model. I've never heard it described in that way either.
Speaker 3:There's so many different phrases I can use from this podcast. I like that everywhere. But honestly, I think our athletes they really do appreciate us long after they're with us, and many junior college kids do appreciate those coaches way more. Because it's these formative years of 18, 19, 20 where you're trying to find out who you are. Do you have room to grow? Do you have room to breathe? Do you have somebody to cry on their shoulder when things suck? And then you know, bounce back from it and realize the world's not crumbling around you? I think that's the hardest question to answer in recruiting is do you really trust that coach that you're going to? Or they just won championships and you want to do that too, you know. So I wish everybody luck in their process.
Speaker 2:We'd be glad to help more people, but it's a tough world out there, especially if you don't have that support. Well, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule, coach Drew, to chat with us. Really really appreciate all of your great wisdom and all of your anecdotes and all of your advice that you've given to everyone listening all the Australians listening, international people listening, even Americans listening. Lots and lots to take away from this podcast and we look forward here at Study and Play to watching your season and watching all of your athletes and cheering you guys on from our corner of the world in Brisbane.
Speaker 2:But yeah, thanks again very much for your time and enjoy the rest of your day.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much.