Ride Home Rants
Ride Home Rants
Behind the Scenes of Collegiate Athletics: Insights from Coaching to Event Management with Kevin Loney
Discover the hidden intricacies of running a successful collegiate athletic program as we sit down with Kevin Loney, Assistant Athletic Director for Facilities and Events Management at Bowdoin College. From his remarkable shift from coaching football to orchestrating events for 31 sports teams, Kevin unveils the meticulous planning and teamwork required to ensure flawless sporting events. Ever wonder what it takes to keep things flowing smoothly behind the scenes, even when faced with unexpected hurdles like malfunctioning scoreboards? Kevin's insights reveal the dedication and adaptability that make these events possible. Plus, I share my own tales from the world of sports broadcasting, shedding light on the unseen efforts that ensure spectators and participants alike have unforgettable experiences.
Step into the transformative world of coaching with reflections on a journey through football and the profound impact of mentorship at Bethany College. We delve into the personal growth stories of a coach shaped by the innovative strategies of Tim Weaver and the camaraderie within the coaching community. Amusing anecdotes peppered throughout highlight the unique connections made on and off the field. Additionally, the episode takes an unexpected turn into swimming techniques, where a simple adjustment dramatically improved race performance, underscoring the powerful impact of minor changes. Whether you're interested in the management prowess behind athletic events or the finer points of sports performance, this episode offers wisdom and stories that inspire passion and perseverance.
• Kevin discusses his transition from coaching to athletic management
• Behind-the-scenes roles in ensuring game day success
• Anecdotes from his time coaching and the
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Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ride Home Rants podcast. This is, as always, your host, mike Bono. I have a great guest for us today. He's coming to us from Bonley College and he is I believe he coached, or he knows Johnny Fittifowl Coney very well, so we're going to get into a little bit of that here, but Kevin Loney joins the show. Kevin, thank you for joining awesome mike bono.
Speaker 2:Good as good to see you, man. Yeah, I got a chance to coach 50 for a year and then recruit up in that neck of the woods, so it was uh feels like a long time ago, but, um, I feel like I'm getting old talking about 2006 I.
Speaker 1:I hear you preaching to the choir here. Uh, for that. So now you're currently the assistant athletic director for facilities and events management at Bowdoin College in Maine. How long have you been in that position, and what does that entail?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been at the college. I'm in year nine, going into ten, but I was coaching football here for about six years. Nine going into, going into 10, um, but I was coaching football here for about six years and then, during during 2020, um, the person who had this role retired after 45 years at the college. Um, she decided to hang up and so they had me move out of coaching into this role. So, basically, what I do is, um, I'm the guy who handles all of our athletic scheduling, all of our facility upgrade, upkeep scheduling, you know, working with our grounds crew, working with our housekeepers, working with I do our facility rentals.
Speaker 2:So we have a hockey rink. We rent it out for the local high schools and groups. We've got our pool is getting used by a club, our local high schools. Our indoor track is getting used this time of year like crazy. So, um, and then I work with all of our all what we have. So we have 31 sports here, division three, school 31 sports, and so I'm the one who's kind of making sure that their practices, their games all of it is like handled properly. I do all of our student worker hiring. So we've got a basketball game going right now. So we've got about a handful of students who are, you know they're, they're sweeping the floor, they're doing stats or doing the scoreboard, all kinds of stuff. I'm doing hiring, doing all their hiring, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did. I did a lot of that when I was at Bethany college. I was actually the athletic director for the radio station when I was in college because I got a sports broadcasting degree. Yeah, got to broadcast every home football, basketball, baseball. I did the PAC soccer championship game it was. It was a lot of fun. I love broadcasting but it's a lot of work behind the scenes and I don't think a lot of people see that. They just see the end result. The show went off Great. How did that happen? You know, it's nice to see the man behind the scenes for sure.
Speaker 2:You know, it's funny. You say that Cause you know, and I was a college football coach from 2000 till 19, 2019. And you know, for the longest time, you never thought about who. Who's putting the flag up so you can do the Anthem. Who's doing all these? It's all these little bits pieces, and when one thing's out of place, you realize, oh wow, this is a huge deal. You know, if, if, if the lines are crooked on the field, right, you know, it's like when I was at Bethany, and I probably saw the same way, a lot of our students were doing a lot of that work, right, and so so, if, one little if, if, you know, if the cutie was supposed to be on laundry and take her to the laundry, now you've got dirty stuff. At practice, it matters, it's a huge you know, huge thing.
Speaker 1:I remember that, like they were scrambling one football game I actually had two other people set up to announce for the radio and director came up to me and he was like Mike, mike, mike, I got a serious question for you. Do you want to be the bison today? I, I got a serious question for you. Do you want to be the bison today? I was like, I was like I'm sorry, he goes, he goes. I know you got the radio thing going on.
Speaker 1:The the normal mascot. He is sick, he is, he cannot make it here. We do not have a fill in. I was like give me, give me the head, let's go, let's get it. You know what I mean. He goes, we just he goes. We need you to amp up the crowd. We know you have a ton of energy. We figured you'd be great to do it. I was like Beth, where, where, where could I change into this thing? But yeah, it's things like that that people don't see. They just see the game go off without a hitch and they don't see like, okay, now we're scrambling to find a mascot last minute and the players are about to run out onto the field and hey, hey, bono, can you throw the bison head on real?
Speaker 2:quick. Hey, the scoreboard is not working. I mean, it happened this year for one of our, our first home game. One of our shot, one of our plate clocks wasn't working properly. Yeah, and like you know and we're so, we're kind of scrambling trying to figure out what's going on. What's doing this. You know we're running all over the campus trying to find this idea. I'm thinking the electrician on a Saturday came in on a Saturday.
Speaker 2:Electrician's working and it's all these little things that work behind the scenes to make sure that, and nobody knows a scramble right. But they see the finished product and if it doesn't work properly, they know, and they're going to definitely vocal about it.
Speaker 1:We had one broadcast where a mic didn't work for the announcer.
Speaker 1:We didn't realize it. We got our headsets on. We could hear ourselves talking. Everything's going off fine.
Speaker 1:And my producer is like texting me radio and into my head while I'm talking about the game. Dude, nobody can hear you. What do you mean? Nobody can hear me. I can hear myself, fine. He's like yeah, he goes. There's so many people calling into the station we can't hear the game our son's playing. It's his first start and they want to listen to the game. They're from, oh, I think that I think he was from like montana, so not like an easy trip to west virginia to be able to watch their son's first start in division three football, absolutely. And I was like, well, okay, since nobody can hear me, what do we need? What do I need to do? Is it a? Is it a connection? Is it? Is it with you guys? What do we need? Let's figure this out on the fly. And just apologizing midway through the second quarter of the game, because that's when we got it up and running and you know, people were still calling into the radio station. I missed the first quarter of my son's first start.
Speaker 2:And I was like it's technology.
Speaker 1:We want you to hear this. We had a recap, like normally we would get you know, 10, 15 minute break at halftime play some music. You know all the sponsors get them in there and we were sitting there recapping the first quarter, right, you know, just to make sure everybody. You know got got up to date. But you know, I know what it's like in west virginia this time of year football season coming in. We're in december right now. Uh, so you're in maine. What is that like and would you recommend visiting maine? What to do there?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely so, I would like. Maine is very much a, a Midwest place on the East coast. Okay, we call it, we call it. The main is a small town, man, it's a everybody knows everybody, um, and beautiful. So Bowdoin is located about two hours North of Boston, um, like just to Harvard, like two hours toward the door, but we're seven miles from the ocean. So really gorgeous part of the country, yeah, phenomenalal in the summertime. I'd say, if you have a chance to visit here in the summertime, do it, because it's called Vacationland and it's pretty amazing If you like good seafood, all of it, plenty of things to do.
Speaker 2:Winter can get challenging, but if you're north of the Mason-Dixon it's going to be challenging in winter, so just live with it. You know we don't have any lake effect, you know, which I think is is a great thing. But, um, you know, we've had our first. We had our first snowstorm, um, uh, earlier in the week and it was. We had also a 60 degree day, like on wednesday, so it was gone. Yeah, you know. So right now you outside you can't even tell um, but uh, you know it's um, you know, know, our campus it's a pretty amazing place. It's a really old school. We've been around since the 1700s and you know one of the cool things here is academically one of the best schools in the country. So you know we're competing with like Carnegie Mellon for some kids every now and again. I know you guys have yeah.
Speaker 2:We were on a bit ago when Weave was at Brown and when he was at Harvard, we're recruiting the same types of kids academically. The kids that are walking out of here are doing great things. It's a pretty great small place to be. I'd say if you have a chance to come visit, come do it. We've got one of our alumni probably the most famous alum we have is a guy named Joshua Chamberlain. He's a guy basically that won the civil war.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So it's a little round top. If you ever want to see the movie Gettysburg, he's played by Jeff Daniels with the big, the big mustache. Yeah, Pretty cool deal, yeah. So we've got him a statue of him on campus and he was a. He was a professor here during the Civil War and lied to the administration to go fight Pretty cool story. And then the other guy who created Netflix, Reed Hastings, is an alum. The guy who's just passed away now, a guy named Peter Buck. Our athletics center is named for this guy named Peter Buck, who's the guy who basically created Subway Sandwiches the business, which is pretty cool stuff. We don't get discounts, though, on either of those.
Speaker 2:It's what it is, but yeah, it's. You know it's a. It's a fun place to be. I never thought I'd be in Maine for almost 10 years, Right, but you know, the, the, the people here are awesome. The kids are great. You know football has been being a part of the program here, with such a long history, has been awesome. And then this, all of a lot of other sports and just the people, like I said, are around here. It's been phenomenal to be around and it's been. It's pretty cool experience Cause.
Speaker 1:I'm from the.
Speaker 2:I'm from the Northeast the Northeast originally from Connecticut, but places you know, as you kind of see through my, my background, I spent a bunch of time in a year and then went out for two years and I went to iowa for two years at a small school and then moved back to the east coast and, um, you know, I've never been anywhere more than three years and to have been here now for for as long as I've been, it's kind of amazing, um, but it's been a great place and, like I said, really amazing people to be around every day yeah, when you were at bethany.
Speaker 1:What years were you at bethany?
Speaker 2:so I was. I was there in 2006. So Tim Weaver's first year I was defensive. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I got, I got there in the fall of 2007. I was going to say, I was saying I don't know if you were there when I was there or what.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I left in February. Yeah, I left in February and I mean I was, it was. It was a great experience. I know I coached a handful of places before that. I was really, but still a really young coach and in the year that I was with that staff so Tim and Bill Garvey and all those guys, andy Upton and all that yeah, I learned a lot about coaching. Coaching and just just from a football, it kind of I say all the time the way Tim goes about his business as a coach kind of completely overhauled and changed how I did everything from a coaching standpoint. Next is an O standpoint, just in terms of just dealing with players, all of it. And I think it's it's been. I've stuck, it's stuck with me till now and even like now that I'm not coaching, I'm kind of coaching a lot of coaches Now. I do a lot of like on the side, a lot of mentoring on the side, and the things that I learned from him I pass on.
Speaker 2:You know here's how we're going to. You know here's how you plan your week to get everything ready to go so that you're prepared on a Saturday. You know to play your game on Friday. I play your game. Just all these little bits and pieces, um and and um, to be able to work on that. You know, there with a great group of kids who are really hungry, you know and I'm sure john will tell you like kind of the experiences, like they had not been very successful for a number of years before we got there. Oh yeah, in our first year we won four games, right, you know, and won some games we probably shouldn't have won. And then there's some teams who are really good and we learned a lot. You know w and won some games we probably shouldn't have won. And then there were some teams who were really good and we learned a lot, right, yeah, you know W&J and Carnegie Mellon.
Speaker 1:We learned a lot. Yeah, w&j taught them a lot every year A lot of lessons.
Speaker 2:But you know it's funny, the guy who's the head coach at Grove City was a freshman quarterback at Grove City that year. That was our homecoming game. We beat them Then. They've now left E3, but Thomas Moore, the guy who's coaching there, was their freshman quarterback. That's crazy. It's crazy Again. Really good people. I say to this day I coached the linebackers and helped work the defense with him. That might have still to this day I've. You know I've I coached the linebackers and helped work the defense with with him and that might've still to this day been the best collection of linebackers I've ever coached, which is pretty impressive. I mean it's guys who could, who are doing some really, really talented or big or athletic or fast and you know, for a guy who was learning how to run the Tampa 2 defense, those guys were great to coach it was phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I just I remember Coach Weaver being there. You know he recruited from within the college too as well. That was one thing I never really saw, because me and a couple of my buddies, we were just kind of hanging out tossing a football around and I had played football in high school, but I was there at Bethany to swim. I was a swimmer do as well and I'm, you know, we're just sitting there seeing how far we could throw a ball. Just stupid 18 year old things to do.
Speaker 1:And it's true, let's see how, let's see if we can blow our shoulder out route, you know, and you know I'm just launching them and tim comes up to me and he goes, hey, man, you got a cannon. I was like, yeah, I mean, yeah, I played a little, you know, um, and I didn't know who he was at the time, uh, so I just kind of was joking around with him. I was like, yeah, man, I mean I got the best quarterback stats, uh, in brook high school history. Like he goes, really, I was like, yeah, playoff game this past the past year, um, we ran a wide receiver reverse pass, I threw the ball, one completion, uh, 75 yards for a touchdown. So you know I'm one for one a hundred percent completion, percentage touchdown, the interception ratio is off the charts.
Speaker 1:And you know he kind of giggled, he goes we'd love to have somebody like you on the team. I was just like, uh, your coach aren't you? He was like, yeah. I was like, yeah, I appreciate that I'm here to swim. I'm not screwing that up, but I appreciate it. Uh. So yeah, like we were talking about there, but you coached with weaver. Uh, bob nizole, andy upton, bill Garvey and Mr Askew all former guests of the show here.
Speaker 1:Oh man, we love Mr here on the show and he's a big fan and a big supporter of the show oh man. We love him. I mean, you touched on it a little bit about Weaver, but those other guys there, you know what was that like, coaching with that collection of guys?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it know, I think the cool part for me, you know, because you know bobby and like ryan lieb, you know yeah he gets it come back and to help coach a little bit too.
Speaker 2:Um, a bunch of guys who were really passionate about the college and they knew the place really inside and out and so they could really do it. They really did a great job relating to the guys. So it's great having a young staff of guys who could relate to kids from kind of all over, you know, and who were go-getters in the recruiting process too and that's, I mean, that's how you get good, is you got to get. You got to have great players and you got to have kids who bought in and and you know everywhere that you know it's kind of funny, those guys, we we got in there, I got hired. We got hired in February basically, and you know, going through like theseason program, winter conditioning, all the kind of stuff that we were doing, you know guys had to kind of really buy into what we were doing and they bought in and they brought in a guy like Matt Cruz.
Speaker 2:You know who's just. You know to this day, just one of the best players I've been around, you know, and it's one of the guys just kind of running around. You know Brent Owens was one of our quarterbacks. You know a bunch of guys just kind of running around doing their thing and just buying into what we were doing. You know Mike Elias and all these great players who just you know, I think we're kind of looking for some direction and got it.
Speaker 2:You know, and that was the first time I'd been around an offense that was like spread running, like the zone read time I'd been around an offense that was like spread running, like the zone read, um, and it was no, it's no huddle and we bought what. So what Gar was doing offensively, you know what gave us a chance to be really successful? Um, and we had a lot of answers. And then, you know, schematically, we were doing some really good things on defense and so the X's and O's were going to be great and just getting the guys to buy into the hard work and the team aspect.
Speaker 2:And even to this day we've talked about here and what you see with great programs is, yeah, they focus on their opponents, but they really are. It's about what they're doing, and Tim used to talk all the time. We say all the time hey, we've got to have this great focus about how we do our business. You know, if we're, if we do what we've got, what we've got to do, to the best of our ability, everything else takes care of itself. And I think, as we talk to any place, any program, any company that's successful, yeah, you've got to know who your opposition is, your competition is, but the competition it's in the mirror and you know how do you do the things that you do to the best of your ability, what are the things that are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? How do you make them strengths? Now, how do you take those things that are strong and make them stronger?
Speaker 2:You know, and and that's, I think, the process that we went through as coaching staff with these guys, um, just in ourselves as coaches, and I think that was great to kind of see how we got ourselves better as well. You know, and um, you know, and you know there's some guys who aren't coaching you more, unfortunately, but I think would be great to stay in it if they could have. You know, like you know, and now garves the, the ad, down at brook and he's like college coaches now, just like like holy cow. I talked the other day I was like how you pulling that one off, it was really impressive. But I think you get. You get people who are going to buy into a mindset and mentality and and that's what's, that's what, uh, that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:I definitely yeah, garf, being the AD there at Brook, I joked around with him. It's my alma mater, Brook. You know I went there and they would let one of the coaches go and my nephews are playing there. So I definitely still follow up and see what's going on there. And I just shot him a quick text Just bust his chops. Like, hey, man, if you want a former player to come back and coach hit me, hit your boy up.
Speaker 2:I'll definitely come back and coach for you.
Speaker 1:Gar, absolutely, you can buy into that process because I knew how Garby ran things. Absolutely. But yeah, he's doing big things with the coaches. He's bringing into Brooke. I'm hoping they can turn that program around like we did when we were there. I around like we did when we were there.
Speaker 1:I mean, I dabbled a little bit into coaching a couple summers ago. In swimming it's a little different, but I was an assistant coach for a summer swim program for a local high school here, tri-valley, where I'm at, and the head coach for that team was the head coach for the swim team for Tri-Valley. So she's like you're a collegiate swimmer. You've had a great resume for swimming. You had a chance at the 2012 olympic trials. Like I want you to work with my high school kids. I mean, this team has 96 kids on it, you know, from 8 to 18. I want you working with the high school team.
Speaker 1:And she saw me focusing on a couple different of the athletes and of the swimmers and she came over to me. She's like why are you really honing in on these three? They're not even my best three swimmers. I said I'm not looking for your best three swimmers, I don't need to worry about that. They know what to do. They're doing their thing. I'm looking for the right swimmers that have the right mindset, that want to put in the work, that are willing to listen to what I have to tell them. Right, and the these kids, their strokes fine, there's nothing wrong with the stroke, maybe a little bit of mechanics, but it's. It's summer, you know, we're not in swim season, and this one she needs one little extra stroke at the end and she'll drop her time by probably three tenths of a second. And she was like, really, I was like, watch, do this with her. And did it. And lo and behold, that uh girl became a regional champion, that's awesome. And swimming that year, that's awesome, and it's. She was like, wow, I never would have thought. I was like, yeah, I see things, you see these kids daily, the little things that you think you would see. Right, you're missing. I'm a completely fresh, unbiased eyes and I saw these things because I had these things.
Speaker 1:When I was swimming, A coach, an assistant coach, came to me and, lo and behold, it was my starts. I was a backstroker. In college. They moved me to backstroke full-time. I never really was a backstroker. My starts were off. It was costing me a half a second to a second on my times and my assistant coach came up to me and she she was just like try this, just just try, I'll try anything if it drops me a couple seconds.
Speaker 1:The next meet we were in a relay. I would enter um the im relay and I was leading up as the backstroker and after the race guys were looking up like we dropped the relay time by like three seconds. How did we drop our time by three seconds? And I looked up I went oh, there it is. I dropped my backstroke split by three seconds. It dropped three seconds off of my time, which is an eternity in swimming. Just from a little. Pull yourself up a little bit more on the start. That was her only critique. It's amazing. Your launch is great, your streamline's great. Pull yourself up a little bit more on that start. Watch what happens.
Speaker 2:Drop three seconds.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. It's insane to me. My first college job was at Norwich University in Vermont.
Speaker 2:Drop three seconds. It's amazing. It's insane to me. My first college job was at Norwich University in Vermont. It's the oldest private military school in the country. It's a school where ROTC was created and I remember one of my first meetings on their campus.
Speaker 2:Our head coach at the time, who I had played for at another college, at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, had said he goes look, we've got a rifle rivalry team here. Naturally it's a military school. He says when you're rivalry, when you have a rivalry competition, the scores look in the thousands. And so he goes if you win your rivalry match 2000 to 1999, you don't know which bullet it was that made the difference. And so you never know what the little thing is going to be that can make the difference.
Speaker 2:But those little things add up and they and and that's where I think, and I think right, that's the message, more so now as we kind of talk through like he's talking, like young kids and then in in young athletes, they don't necessarily see that because they see the big picture right at the end. Well, hey, if you understand that the little thing is going to be the difference maker, you may not know it, but you just got, you still got to work at it. What's you know? It's the guy who's trying to, who's struggling foul shooting. Maybe it's the one little adjustment here and there and that's what takes that coach, hey, a coach with some fresh eyes to see that sometimes, yeah, and and hey, and, being willing to try new things and be willing to fail because hey, oh yeah okay, who cares.
Speaker 2:You know you tried it. Unless you tried it, yeah, you know that's been. I think. So one of the things that I that I deal with here at bowden is we've got a lot of students here who are like those a personality go-getter kids they've never had. They've never had a b, they've never had a c or d in school. They get to college and they fail and they get an F on a paper, the first paper, and their world comes crashing down. You try something and it failed.
Speaker 2:Now let's try some new things, some new ideas, and take a deep breath and realize that's just feedback for you. You're going to be okay Knowing that they're in a school because they had an F on a paper as a freshman in college. You're going to be okay. You know you're going to get the jobs. They're still going to come. You're going to be all right.
Speaker 2:Just a matter of okay. Let's take a deep breath and figure out your process and what's going to be, how we get you from there, from here to the next spot, so that you can go be confident doing what you're doing and and like to your point it's like those little things here and there that maybe they've been doing things a certain way for a really long time and it's worked for them. And now, hey, now you're in deep water and you got to figure out, okay, what are those new things I got to adjust, or what I got to get better at, or things maybe that coasted on because I could and I didn't realize I was coasting on, and that's, I think, a great. It's a, it's a great teaching tool for for our students for sure, um you know, yeah, a lot of our athletes especially yeah, I was that stubborn athlete.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you that. You know, even going into college, like coach mcgowan wanted me to learn the breaststroke, could never do the breaststroke. And I've been swimming since I was eight. I still can't do the breaststroke. I don't know why I can't get my legs to do what what they're supposed to do. Yeah, and I fought him on it. He was like well, I might need you for this hunter brushstroke in this next meet. I was just like we're probably gonna have to dq that one coach. I can't do that. I'm telling you right now I can't do the brush. I'm gonna either not show up and we're gonna get dq'd for not showing up, or I'm gonna do something wrong and we're still gonna get dQ'd. I'm trying to save us a little bit. He was like alright, well then come with me. He cleared everybody out of a single lane and goes hang on to the deep end wall and you can't leave until you do 100 breaststroke kicks. I was like why do I? Is it because I bucked back at you? Is that why you're punishing me now? He's like no, no you why you're punishing me now? He's like no, no, you'll thank me later. I don't think my legs are gonna thank you after this coach. I'm just gonna I'm not gonna lie to you here like this is, this is brutal, but and he stood there and if I did one wrong it didn't count. It was like it was like that military school that you were just talking about, you know, and it's that little thing. And he was like you know what you say. You can't do it point your toe a little bit more here when you come up and the strokes got a little bit better.
Speaker 1:I did the event, did not do well, but you know, I I did the event. We didn't dq, we didn't dq and I I was. I was already going into that event like yep, this is not going to go well for us and I'm going to have a dq on my record and that's not good for me, uh. But you know, listen to coach. You know I always, yeah, I always I'm not looking for the best, I'm looking for the right athlete. Yeah, and that that was that's my mentality when I would know in in coaching and that. But you left bethany, like you said, in 2006 season. I believe it was for the. Was it for the university of notre dame?
Speaker 2:yeah, can you talk about that experience a little bit? Yeah, it's kind of funny. So, um, one of the guys that we had worked with at harvard was working at notre dame and uh, charlie weiss was looking to hire some new young coaches, um on the staff, to kind of be like the low totem pole people, and he hired four people. So I mean, we've asked me it was do you, do you want to apply for the job? Now?
Speaker 2:I grew up as a Notre Dame fan and okay, but you know we had gone four and six at Bethany like, all right, I'm my first time being a coordinator, I'm learning how to do this thing. Do I really want to walk away from that, to kind of start from scratch? And I went home over the holidays and asked a bunch of people what I should do and I decided I'm gonna go, I'm gonna take a shot and go for it, interviewed, ended up getting hired, um, it's kind of funny that the guy I shared an office with um is, uh, shane waldron, who's just the oc with the bears. Yeah, I'm assuming it would not surprise me if she doesn't end up at north carolina with coach belichick they're together with the patriots and then Patrick Graham, who's the coordinator for the Raiders. He's my roommate for two years, okay, so we get there in 2007, and it was interesting because I say the great part of it was A Notre Dame's an amazing place.
Speaker 2:I think if you ever get a chance to go there or be a part of. It was A. Notre Dame is an amazing place. You know, I think if you ever get a chance to go there or be a part of it, even people who hate Notre Dame you go and you visit. It's like, oh my God, this place is different. It's a small college playing big time college sports and that's why their fans are so rabid and obnoxious and annoying, because that's just who they are. But they've earned it a little bit. The kids are awesome to be around. They're just phenomenal young people.
Speaker 2:Some guys who I still talk to all the time and you know, just they happen to be growing up on national television every Saturday and going through some tough times because we were there in 07 when we were one of the worst teams in the country. You know you just graduated. You know Brady Quinn and Justin Margin, all these guys and you walk in with a freshman quarterback in Jimmy Clawson and you know Golden Tate's a freshman, all these guys and they learn what they learned by. They learned by losing. You know we were, we were three and nine. Their freshman year lost Navy for the first time in 45 years and just, you're going through that experience and you're trying to just and they just kept coming back, which is awesome to see because they had a ton of character the next year, you know a bunch of guys get hurt mid season but ended up winning a bowl game. You hadn't won a bowl game since, since Lou Holtz was coaching there. Right, that was a big. That was a big experience and you know it was.
Speaker 2:I didn't. I never knew that you could work as hard as you had to work. Um, I worked really hard. You know as, as young guys on staff, you're the ones in there doing all the film work, doing all the. You know you're. You're the ones you know staying at the hotel on official visits, make sure kids are staying out of trouble. You're you're living in the dorm over the summer when the guys were, when the guys report because, hey, they got to make sure they. You're in charge of that stuff and you know it was.
Speaker 2:You know a lot of work. You're in early. You're leaving late. You know not getting a lot of sleep. I'm still trying to figure out how to sleep regulated now. You know 20, some odd years later. But you know also, again, learned a lot of football, learned a lot of X's and O's, learned a lot of just dealing with people and you know those are kids, are kids again, same thing, very much go-getter kids. They. They struggle sometimes with the with, you know, doing what they have to do, like and just cutting it loose. You know, and I think as you watch them now I mean they've got some guys who can do that. I think it's been a great job recruiting by the last few staffs on there and the cats has there. Now they've. But when you see kids who, the challenge of really, really smart kids sometimes is they overanalyze everything right and they're just stuck there.
Speaker 2:you know, I think about guys like you know. So obviously bethany has, like the, the scholarship program, or if you get the, get the full ride, if you let like I forget what they call it, but dave obble, you know, got it, yeah, in school, and you know those types of kids sometimes just they get paralyzed, they overthink you, they want to be perfect, right, they overthink things, and that same thing would happen there, um, and you know, you get some guys who are just like, remember, we had a kid who's a really talented, you know, high, high recruit out of college and he was a scout team player and if we didn't tell him what to do on every single play, he just stood there, you know, and just cause he's just analyzing analyzing everything you know.
Speaker 2:And and so getting guys to trust their ability and to. You know, that was kind of the process there, but it worked out and you know, I was able to. I still a lot of things that in terms of just things like you never thought about. So here's an example Like when we were on the road for games, we would meet all the time and I never understood why we did it until I became a head coach. Yeah, and actually, honestly, I figured it out the year after I left, because we were I was at a Division II school in Iowa.
Speaker 2:We were on a road trip and in fact I think we were going to figure out who we were going to go play and guys were late to the bus leaving the hotel. The coach said we're leaving at 9am, guys are walking on the bus at nine o'clock and he's, he's furious, right and well, and I'm sitting there going, okay. Well, we never told them to be early for the bus. We told them the bus leaves at nine and and I guess and and before that our staff had gotten there. That was never really a thing, that was that was kind of explained to them and so I said all right, so let's have a meeting five minutes before it's time to go. That way you're on time for the bus. Yeah, I'd rather have you late for the bus, late for the meeting, than late for the bus. I'm not gonna leave a player right.
Speaker 2:it's like life happens you're on, you're on the road in a hotel, bad breakfast, you get kids, you know whatever happens you get something yeah you know at least now, if you're late to the meeting we can deal with it, versus hey, if you're, if you're late to the bus, we're leaving some kid, I'm not, we're not doing that. That's especially this day and age.
Speaker 2:You can't do that so absolutely you know, and I'm oh, that's why we did it, because I don't want Jimmy Clawson late to the game, because we need that guy. I mean we can talk tough about hey, whatever, but that guy's a, he's a dude, absolutely so it was. It was some great lessons from that standpoint and just also just in terms of like, just the game planning aspect of things. You know, we were so thorough, schematically, you just got to have better players than everybody else and that's at that level. You're playing against some guys that were just flat out better, right, I mean, at that time USC at the time was rolling. I mean, yeah, they were. I mean we lost to Matt, matt Sanchez twice.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't close. They were better than us. We beat Michigan. My second year. That was Rick Rod's first year there, but the year before they smoked us they had a bunch of that was Ryan Mallett and Jake Long and all those guys and it's like you're going through. I still have the old scouting reports going that guy, that guy, that guy, that guy's getting a gold jacket. It's like, oh great, no wonder we got our faces ripped off.
Speaker 1:You know yeah I, I still even remember that in college, you know, swimming against teal, yeah, and did not know, yeah, walking into it, that they were that good of a swim program, right, and we thought it was weird because one it was a distance meet and for me I was a spreader, you know, 200 yards was my max, right, and that wasn't even pushing it, yeah, and that was the shortest event that I swam that day. And you know, going into it, and their pool wasn't in yards like Bethany was, it was in meters, so it was an Olympic-style pool. Oh yeah, it was in meters, so it was an olympic style pool. Oh yeah, it's like all right, there's a d3 college that has a olympic size pool in meters, not in yards, right, and we walked in. We're used to, you know, bethany college. The swim program was very small. When I was there I was 104 guys on the team. So you know, very small team and you know we parents, a couple parents coming, you know a couple friends coming to watch you girlfriends, whatever Boyfriends are there just to watch their significant others and everything like that. But then we get to deal and the place is packed. There's, there's, there's a band playing, there's the mascots there and I'm looking at my buddy going where the hell are we Like? What are we in the Olympics right now? Are they that good? Are they still that good? And my buddy has been swimming there for a couple of years. He was like, oh, you're in for a treat today. I was just like, okay, so these guys are just that much better than us? Is that? Is that the case? The case, and I still remember it was.
Speaker 1:It was the 500 uh meter backstroke brutal event for me. And I remember finishing the race. I mean at the time I think it was like 20 laps in the pool. It's a long, long time. You're used to swimming four to eight, you know. So I remember because the rule in swimming isn't not a lot of people know this is you know, just because you finish. The rule in swimming isn't not a lot of people know this is you know, just because you finish the race. If everyone isn't finished, you cannot leave that lane, otherwise you were disqualified. That means getting out of the pool. Yes, you have to stay in that lane. And I just remember finishing and being like, oh, thank god, I'm done. And I looked and the guys aren't even huffing and puffing anymore. That's how long after they had finished that.
Speaker 1:It took me to finish the race because I never knew how to pace myself in distance. My mindset as a sprinter is go as fast as you can, as hard as you can for the entirety of the race. And I look around, I'll beat red. And these guys are like, hey, good job. I was like you don't have to sugarcoat that man. That sucked, you're good, good for you, man. I looked at his thumbs. I was like dude, those are awesome times, man, good for you, but yeah it's crazy, like you talked about, like we.
Speaker 2:So it's funny, in 06, Teal has just coming off winning the conference championship. Yeah, and we played them at home. And I remember, you know, we had a great week of practice and we were, as a staff, like trying to think okay, we weren't sure, like, how good we were, how good they were Like I mean they were good on tape. And then, literally in the first five minutes, I remember we going, oh, you guys are much better than we are. Let's hang on to it and let's just do what we can to. You know, make it respectable. And, and you know we didn't I'd like to say to the players but you're just going to do what you gotta do, let's not, you know, let's not beat ourselves by, cause these guys don't need any help beating us. So we've got to go, but that's it's. It's it's always. I think it's always good to kind of, hey, get out of your comfort zone.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then and learn hey, if this thing happens, Now you have an experience for it, now you can coach a kid who's going to go do that thing Maybe he's never done it before. Or maybe if there's an injury and you need a kid who's a sprinter to go and do a distance, here's your plan, here's your path, here's how you do it.
Speaker 1:Learn how to pace yourself. Again, I was one of those cocky athletes, in college too as well. I hate to admit it, but I was. You know, looking back, I'm 35 now I can look back at you. At 18 I was. I was cocky, I was not confident.
Speaker 1:I was cocky and the coach was just like, and you know, he had me in the distance lane that week of practice for the teal, for the teal mate. I was like why does he have me over here like I'm cooking these people, like they're they're, they're slower swimmers than me, they're distance, or that's why they're they're. They're slower swimmers than me, their distance, or that's why they're they're here. And he was, and he I thought he was joking he was like you gotta get ready for that 500 backstroke. I was like, okay, coach, yeah, good, one 500 backstroke, all right, good luck, good luck having that happen. It's not happening, coach. And it happened. And yet you know it's one of those ones that you know it's like yeah, I learned a lot that meet. I don't say that I failed. Yeah, obviously I swam the worst, worst time I've ever swam in my life. But I learned a lot about myself and from that point, on.
Speaker 1:I finished the race I did not quit. There's no quit in me If I had to just float back to the start finish line, there was no stopping me. And I learned a lot because that was about midway through the season that we had that meet. And I just remember after that, whatever coach said, you got to coach, yep, let's do it. All right, you got me in the 200 again. All right, let's go. I got you. I learned how to, I learned how to pace myself for that first hundred. You know, and it's just little things like we talked about earlier, little things like that that make athletics fun and make coaching fun. You know I I even had that in the shortened time one year that I was an assistant coach in a summer swim program trying to trying to get kids to. You know, buy in and listen to the, to the advice, and you know a lot of them are like, well, I'm not a district champion.
Speaker 1:it's like okay, now we know where you want to work, let's put the work in now you think it's going to happen in your little short swim season in in high school and to get to districts. No, it starts now in the summer, when you're thinking, oh, we could relax. This is a summer swim program, it's supposed to be fun, and blah, blah, blah. It's like I don't know about you, but winning's fun to me, yeah, winning's fun it's a process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's funny you talk about that. Like the thing that I do now is I talk to a lot of our athletes is when we've got some guys, maybe kids, who are maybe we're going through some crisis of confidence or just trying to learn stuff. You know I'm a big big reader and so like there are a couple of books that I kind of push on kids. Hey, look, you know, so are you? Are you still his fan? Yeah, so, naturally so. Russell Wilson's is actually just his best friend just passed away from cancer a couple of years ago and you know he, that guy, wrote a book called it Takes what it Takes, and and that is a book about kind of to your point, hey, it's going to take you this long to learn this thing. It may take. It may take person over there 10 days, it may take you 20 days, it's going to take, it's going to take what it's going to take.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the way that you attack that that time's going to take is going to determine how successful you are with. And then the other, the other guys got in. Uh, josh, um, I got to look at his name. I'll, I'll, I'll email you the names of the guys. But he wrote a book called chop wood, carry water. You know, I wrote a book called um wind in the dark, and this is kind of to your point, and the wind in the dark is about. It's a, it's a parallel. Basically it's about a kid who is gonna go do this, this like really dangerous sporting event, and how he's got to learn to do all these things to be successful when no one's watching, yeah Right, and so if you want to be great at this thing, it's when no one's watching you do it. You're not winning districts during districts.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:You win over the summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You don't win football games. Today is the quarterfinals of D3, right, those games aren't one day. They're won in in december and in january and february and march and april and sometime when you're on your own without your coaches, that's when you win those games and and the level of commitment to that and the level of of detail to those things is what it will determine if you have a chance to be successful. Sometimes you're going against Teal.
Speaker 1:It's what it is.
Speaker 2:To hold your own, to compete. It doesn't happen today, it happened months ago. It's a huge lesson for kids to learn, for people in general to learn.
Speaker 1:I had a couple of buddies in high school. I wasn't a of buddies in in high school, I wasn't a four year starter at football. You know I I earned my spot my senior year on special teams. You know from the work I put in four years and I was that habitual scout, team player and you know it. It guys didn't see. You know I was going out with my dad in the in the summertime and I wasn't allowed to do anything I wanted to do till I caught a hundred balls as a receiver. Until you catch a hundred balls, if I throw I have to throw you 400 for you to catch a hundred. Till you catch a hundred balls we're not you can't do anything.
Speaker 1:And you know, even in practice, you know getting beat up by the starters just guys that are just like looking to punish the scout team players and popping right back up and going back into the, into the huddle for the next, next play. And you know it's it coach at the, at the bag, what, what was like he was probably the. He goes and I mean this in the best way possible the dumbest and toughest person on our football team. He goes. I've seen him get his head taken off in practice to where his helmet literally flew five yards the opposite direction. He got up, grabbed his helmet, put it back on and went back into the huddle. Finished the play he broke a finger and it was literally laying across the other two fingers. He had the trainer pop it back in, tape it up and he was back in after that and he just didn't know how to stop working like they. There was times they had to literally like pat me. So go, go, sit down now. You need, you need a minute.
Speaker 2:So you want to work, but that's the work that I would rather have to pull kids back, pull people back from working too hard, than having to push them to work harder. Yeah, absolutely, athletics is special. We've got kids here and everywhere. I mean people who come to these, these colleges and even high schools and and and and youth teams, whatever who bring a lot of baggage with them. You know, you know if it's. You know I tell coaches all the time hey, you know, if a kid comes from a broken home, the kid didn't break the home.
Speaker 1:Right, you know what I mean. Something happened.
Speaker 2:Something's happening, so we got to deal with it as coaches. We got to deal with it as as the adults in the room and help and help them find their their way to get, get to where they want to get to. That's what coaching is about in general. Right, it's about getting that person to be at their best when it counts. Yeah, and it takes to do that, and, and yeah, that's you know, fine, you know your dad pushing you, even if you want to do it and the days you don't want to do it.
Speaker 2:Those are the ones right and I worked with a guy a couple years ago here at bowden um who used to talk about. You know their easy days and their hard days. First day of practice easy day, everybody's all geeked up, pumped up. First game easy it's. It's practice 20 or 30 where you're the monotony of it. You know that's, that's the part, that's the hard day. Can you bring the same energy, the same juice, the same focus to those days? You know, when no one's watching, you know to be where you, so you can get you, knowing that, hey, the outcome is going to get you what you want. I give you a chance get what you want absolutely that's.
Speaker 1:That's. Yeah, yeah, it's just. I remember that. I just remember them pulling you back. Yeah, literally, there's grass hanging out of your helmet because you've been planted so many times. Take a minute, yep, take a breath, grab some water, come back. They wouldn't let me come back in. Sometimes it's like all right, coach, I'm good, I got a jug of water, I'm good. He's. No, no, we're gonna let somebody else get some work. All right, that's just it. I need to work, coach, that that's me. It earned me a spot on our kick coverage team. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:like, and that's that was huge for me as a senior. And deep down inside your teammates know it. That's the best part, right? Those, they're seeing you, they, they see the work and we see it now too, like there's a. There's a whole world now where, you know, I've had, we've had people come and speak at the college about different things and you know the idea of the try hard. Well, give me a team, try hard all day, every day, all day, every day. Yeah, we'll pull them back. You know, give me kids who, who are committed to being the best version of themselves they can be, because ultimately they they may not get there, but they're going to work at it and if they fail, they fail, so be it, I'd rather fail, you know, aiming for being the best and whatever happens happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and we're running near the end of the time here, so I want to get this last question in this last segment. But if someone is interested in uh, bonan in university there, uh, what, you know what's to learn more, you know how to find them and everything like that. So you know, tell everyone you know. If there's an email or anything that we can put down in the description, tell everyone where they can find you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely, uh, boden, um, you know, uh, you can go on a website. It's a pretty, pretty in-depth one B-O-W-D-O-I-N, dot E -D-U, and then athletics at Bowdoin. You can kind of look at all that part of it. But just as a school, about 1800 students, just again a really amazing place where we're just finishing early decision one right now We've got we take about 500 kids a year, um, and you know we're trying to get kids all over the country, all over the world, to come here, um, it's great little, this tiny little place in Maine, man, it's, it's, you know, kind of a ton of majors. You know, I think a lot of our athletes are either going into like the finance world, pre-law, pre-med, um, a couple, a couple people going to education and they're kind of doing pretty amazing things when they walk out of here, which has been great. I would say that in this day and age where, where the economy is where it is, the majority of our students are walking out of here with the job they want, which I think is kind of a unique situation. Our alumni are really engaged. We actually just had our men's basketball team was actually out here at Ecclewood Woods last week. They played out at um, at carnegie mellon, carnegie mellon, um in a tournament and, uh, we actually had an alumni event while we're out there, and so we've got a bunch of people out there as well. And, um, I will say that I've never been in a place where all the alumni are as passionate about a place as they are and they're going to. If you're, if you're in the play on Broadway, they're coming to support you and act like jackasses in the stands. They're cheering you on, which I think is a pretty awesome thing. You know, and I think there there are places where the alumni are really tied to the place. I think Bethany's one of those places.
Speaker 2:This place has been just for me and my time here, just this amazing experience to see these people who come from all over the world and, to this day, are still the closest of friends. I mean, I'm on a text chain with 40 alumni who get together and have dinner every other month, just hanging out at a Mexican restaurant and having dinner, just talking about their time here and how it's helpful, and then you know if a kid wants to go, do this, that or the other thing, they'll, they'll, they'll get your help. They'll get your help. They'll talk to you about it, and then they're at the top of a hat and that's. And then our professors are amazing. I mean they, they come to games. We've got, like I said, 31 sports, so a third of our student body are athletes at one of the top 10 ranked schools in the country, and we've got professors in the stands watching games, grading papers while watching games and cheering on being crazy. It's been awesome.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So that's awesome. It's a pretty amazing, pretty unique place. Um, and I've thought, I never thought I'd be, like I said, be at a place this long uh, especially in Maine, of all places, but it's, it's been awesome to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So, yeah, everybody, I will put the link there in the description of this episode here to listen to. But, kevin, I do have to get this segment in. It is the last and final segment here and I don't let anybody know about this because it is the fast 55,. Five random questions from the wonderful manager of the podcast, johnny. He sent these to me today, um so, cause he had, I know we had a rescheduling, uh conflict last time we were supposed to record here, so he sent me a whole new set of questions Cause he wants it to be a surprise for both of us. These are kind of rapid fire, but you can elaborate if you need to. All right, all right. So question number one all you can eat crab legs, yay or nay? Yay, I mean, come on, that's a, that's a toss-up for the first question. Come on now, let's here we go, here we go. This. This is a hundred percent a fitting question. If 20 horses fought five giraffes, who wins?
Speaker 2:giraffes okay, yeah I can see that it's range it's.
Speaker 1:It's normally good. Yeah, you got to get that range. Yep, that's where I was thinking. All right, question number three the best flavor of popsicle is oh uh grape grape, yeah. Grape or orange for me, it's grape or orange for me. It's great for orange for me, all right. Canoeing, overrated or underrated canoeing, canoeing uh underrated great exercise.
Speaker 1:I actually taught it um for two years at uh upper iowa university oh, I knew he was going to add this question in here and you're going to know why as soon as I read it. Are nhlL players more athletic than Olympic swimmers? Yeah, some of them are, not all, some of them are. As somebody that was an Olympic hopeful in swimming, I knew he's been waiting four years We've been doing this show to get that dig in.
Speaker 1:But you know what, I'm a huge NHL fan too as well in. But you know what, I'm a huge nhl fan too as well. So you know those guys are freak athletes. I'll give you that. But yeah, that was the fast 85 and he gave you a couple toss-ups in there, but then we got back to a little bit more of the, the finer questions of of johnny's mind and how it works. That is phenomenal. Kevin, I give every guest this opportunity at the end of every show. If there's anything you want to get out there, anything else you want to promote, whether it's for the college, anything like that, or even if it's just a good message, I'm going to give you about a minute.
Speaker 2:Man on the floor is yours my message honestly is this is we live in a world where people who are now being like just generally nice people seems to be a negative thing. It costs nothing to be a nice person, say please and thank you and all that stuff. Just treat folks with dignity and respect. It's not that hard. It's not that hard. It makes everything else go a lot faster, a lot easier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it when people end it on a good message like that. I really do. I mean, I'm all for helping people promote anything that they got going on for themselves, but when it's a good message like that, I absolutely love it. But that is actually going to do it for this week's episode of the ride home rants podcast. I want to thank my guests again. Kevin Loney for joining the show here. A lot of fun to get to talk to you. Talk at sports, all to talk to you. Talk at Sports, all Things, coaching and your journey and everything like that. It was an amazing one. It's great to listen to. As always, if you enjoyed the show, be a friend, tell a friend. If you didn't tell them anyways, they might like it just because you didn't. That's going to do it for me and I will see y'all next week.
