1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Barry Thompson (Fairfax Football Academy): June 23rd, 10am

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Mike Tomlins comments on coaches who don't want to coachAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's time to go one-on-one with D.P. Coming at you live from the couple Chevrolet GMC Studios. Here is your host, Derek Pearson. Brought you by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul. On 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticket FM.com. Welcome to one-on-one. Thank the folks that make it happen. Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul.

Ambition of Lecture. Joe Davis and Company for what they do. greatly appreciated for making this hour of radio happen. 402-464-5-6-85. You could join in a conversation on the Starter-Hammer text line or the Honda-Lincoln hotline, but I'll say this. Jump on the video stream. We'll have some fun with it in this hour as well.

A couple of things in play. We're in a mood, a coaching mood. And every now and then a coach, up and reminds you of what your north star should be every now and then it happens in this case we're going to bring one to the phone and we'll bring one to air but mark if you would please if you would hit his music the autumn wind is a pirate blustering in from sea with a rollicking song he sweeps along swaggering boisterously his face is weather-beaten He wears a hooded sash

With a silver hat about his head And a bristling black mustache He growls as he storms the country A villain big and bold And the trees all shake and quiver and quake As he robs them of their gold The autumn win is a raider Pillaging just for fun

He'll knock you round and upside down and laugh when he's conquered and won. That has to just settle you into your space, into your good space. Let's bring him in. Coach Barry Thompson, BT. What's happening, man? D.P. Are you with me? D.P. Are you with me?

Right here. Ain't going nowhere. Barry, we have to set the tone for the conversation today by playing a clip that you and I talk about yesterday. Mark Alarla, if you would, take us to coach Tomlin, please. Right. In an effort to do so, we better manage the collective and the individuals within the collective. I love to hear coaches resist the responsibility of coaching. What did you say, coach? I love coaches that resist the responsibility of coaches that talk negatively about a dude that can't learn and blah, blah. Man,

if everybody can learn we need less coaches. Yeah, that's true. Right? If the group didn't need management, then we wouldn't make as much. Yep. I love reading draft evals and somebody's talking about anything other than pedigree, talking about how poor somebody's hand usage is.

Well, that's coaching. I don't run away from coaching. I run too coaching. Love it. It all is in line with that not seeking comfort because when you're a coach that's talking about Somebody can't learn. You're seeking comfort because your teaching is struggling.

Listen, man. Every now and then somebody comes and resets the GPS for what you're supposed to be doing. And when you talk about your programs and organizations, you have to talk from that. What's the first takeaway, BT? I heard it and took my breath away. It literally took my breath away. And I go, yes, there are so many coaches out there on too many levels who do run away from the responsibilities of coaching. In some cases, it's my belief that they don't know how to coach.

in other cases I believe it's what coach Tomlin said that it's more comfortable for them kind of not to coach to fall into these things this guy is not this not that not this and so we don't want them and we miss the thing that those types of coaches are missing in my opinion is they're missing

the transformative power of coaching, to me the essence of coaching, and the real reward of coaching is to help somebody get to where they need to be. We've had talks about this that I don't know if it was you, another of my coaching friends,

you know, when you have a young person in front of you and there's that coach that coach Tomlin's referring to and they look at all the things that this person can't do instead of trying to help them hey how can i help you understand this better how can i change the way that i communicate with you how can i uh adjust what i'm doing to accent to accentuate what you do well when a player has that coach that resists that that young person walks through a different door in life. On the other hand,

that same player, they're lucky to engage with a coach that doesn't resist the responsibility of coaching. And for listeners, Coach Tom and, of course, are being sarcastic there. But who engages with the responsibility coaching, they not only have a chance

to get that person through another door, another path in life, or an easier path to where they're going to go anyway. But then that starts to affect the people around them. And it's just, it's just too many

times, in my experience, it's a missed opportunity. And to be honest with you, there are coaches that I don't want to be around. And I enjoy being around men who look at a player and say, okay, where,

how can we get him to do this? Or where do we need him? You know, and then having a conversation with him. And sometimes, it's as simple as, you know, and what I do as a young guy's coming up, sit down with them at early state, say, do you want to do this? Do you want to play quarterback? Like, imagine that conversation.

Right. So high school kids, he's in ninth grade, he's 10th grade, and you know there's going to be some competition, and after his ninth grade, you're just sitting down the office, say, do you want to be a quarterback or do you want to play somewhere else? you know like just those things are just so important and you let me talk and I shared a video with you yesterday I have a guy who now is being paid professionally played quarterback and I shared with DP and I won't share publicly because I want to embarrass you kids

but I share with DP DP good with words he can describe it and when you look at that video I could I could think of a hundred people that I looked at that video and told their answer to that young man would have been, no, you need to go play receiving you'll never be a quarterback. And I know for a fact, he's been told that. But my approach with him was, hey, if you want to work at this, we'll work at this. Now, there's times when I wanted to choke him. Right.

Now, I'm not lying. It's not easy. There's times I don't want to choke him. Right. But he kept moving forward. even when I was frustrated, he kept moving forward. There's a saying that I ran across recently, which has never discouraged anyone who's making progress no matter how slow.

Never discourage anyone who's making progress no matter how slow. And that's what happened. And now this guy's getting paid to play football. And he has changed. He's grown over the last six or seven months. and he changed the horizon of the guys that changed with him. You know, and all that is gained just because I decided to say, hey, if you want to work at this, I'll work at it.

That's it, right? That if I hadn't engaged in responsibility as a coaching, I would have missed out not only in his life and how it may alter his family and his projection, but again, the other young men that are just below him, looking up. Hey, I want to do that. Just by that simple act.

Coaching at its essence is a powerful thing. And I just think that sometimes it gets lost as to what it's all about. And here's the great thing about it. It leads to winning. That's the great thing about it. It leads to winning. It's always, like I've never. engage somebody that way

and lost or regretted it. That part. And I understand the higher pressure. You've got to win, right, and do all that stuff. But here's the thing. You can do all that stuff and still move somebody along. Maybe he's not your starter. You know, but you don't discourage them.

You know, you say, okay, you know, this, okay, I want you to work on this. But, hey, while you're working on this, I need you to go do this for me. I'll do this. then you take care of the rest. And teams watch how you handle people. They do. You look at Coach Tomlin's interview and look at the bosses that were sitting down with him.

Right? Yep. I mean, for y'all don't know, Fred Taylor was all about the business. And Ryan, I mean, he was one of them running back that you wouldn't really think about, but he was always posting, always posting, always posting, go look at his numbers. Yeah.

And Ryan Clark, you know, there's one local franchise. You know, when they were stumbling and bumbling, they didn't have any use for Ryan Clark. Well, Pittsburgh found use for him. Yeah. You know, still bought it by that. Yeah, I mean, it's just so easy to look at that. You know, one organization that had any use for them, and then this other organization, you know, we'll take them. and then they realized everything he brings to the table

and he exits his career on a high note winning consistently competing for playoffs and that type of stuff and the people that said no he's not this he's not that they're still stumbling around right and you would think that organization that consistently do that

somebody would be bright enough to say whoa whoa whoa why are all these good teams wanting people that we don't think we have any room for. Why is that? No, that's going to make too much sense. There's going to be too much. It would make way too much.

Well, you and I have been in this shared space and there's a kid that, there's several kids that come on. You and I could talk about former players who all fall. I mean, there's a bundle. There's a bundle of life influencers who we caught at a phase

where, to be some, specific. There's one kid that on during Easter break of his freshman year. Now this young man had played quarterback for Barry on the freshman football team and I then had him. My knowledge of him was just from that football football season with him. And you kind of watch from the from the edges kids and how they maneuver and how they they they carry themselves. And I, I called Barry during Easter of the baseball season, and I said, it happened. And there's a phrase that Barry and I use, we got one.

Like, well, we'll yell, we got one. Because the bridge now becomes clear and clean for them to cross over and do the greater thing. But this was a kid that was my third team catcher, and was our backup quarterback. but he had the thing that led me to be curious. The program head said he's not that kid. He's not fast enough. He's not big enough.

He's not strong enough. And I said, that's got nothing to do with whether this kid's going to be successful in life. That's got nothing to do with it. And he and I, me and this kid came to me. He was down. He was having. But he showed up on a day when nobody else showed up and said, feed me coach feed me

am I wasting my time you know can I be good at this and I said well first of all you shouldn't be my third string catcher second of all you should be up there playing with the big boys third of all you should be our starting quarterback next year but that's a decision you have to make and within that you have to trust that I'm telling you

the absolute truth and I said to him do I have your this is where that phrase came came from do i have my your permission to tell you the truth and the kid his eyes got big because nobody had told him the truth that he was underachieving and that he was underworking and i work with this kid for two hours a day over the next week and then i called barry again and i said he got it he got it so immediately this kid goes up i launch him above the other catchers i put him in the starting lineup. He has three games at the lower level where his whole life changed. And he then became the varsity catcher the next week. The next week. And then Barry gets him and he asked Barry the question

that all the kids really want to know. Am I good enough? Can I be good enough? And I remember Barry calling me and going, you won't believe it. He just doesn't get it. Like, he doesn't believe us. Yeah, no, he, it's a similar story. And D.P. I can, I'm thankful that I can tell these stories. You know, that was one of the first years I was on the 11th Circuit, and I had told a bunch

of guys, you know, hey, I'm out here. And if you come, is that Redskins Park. And I said, if you come, there should be a lot of people. around so make sure you walk onto the field and find me so I can engage with you and I don't know I was 10 or 15 guys and so at the end of the event he's the one kid that walks down with his dad and he's bright I think I told the story before and he's bright-eyed and he says he's his first question he said do you think I can play in college I said yes and then he said he said do you think I can do this and I said yes I said but here's what involved and I

I laid it out for him, you know, rearranging lights and getting up early and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, he was all gassed up. I said, you know, go home and talk about it. You know, come to me with an answer. I said, I'll still love you either way, but come with me and answer. Like, I gave him, like, two days or something. Well, he called back, and he said, yeah. And it involved him getting to school around 6 o'clock in the morning and me physically teach him how to throw the football.

And this is after his freshman season. So this is right after. I might have had him a little bit before the baseball season. So he had started that process. So when you got him in Easter, you know, and it clicked over. Anyway, bottom line is he wind up getting an elite 11 invite. And then the senior year, this guy that kept, you know, kept every year they keep asking questions about him, the head guy.

If you think he's arm strong enough, I'm like, no, he's ninth grade or asked him, is his arm strong up? Yeah, he'll be strong enough. You know, 10th grade. He's his arm strong up. You think he can do it. I'm like, yeah, he can do it. And then they had a coaching changeover, and that coach wanted to run him out of the building.

Right, but I stayed there that one year to fight for him. And then he winds up throwing for over 400 yards in the game and doing all the stuff. And, yeah, it just, it just hits me hard. And with a lot of quarterback that I have, I have a 15 off of kid right now. And I remember the day. It's not far from where I'm talking to you. We're coming off the field when he's probably in sixth going into the seventh grade or maybe seventh grade.

And we finished a session. And his dad, he was a great dad, just was asking a typical dad question. And you think this is worth it? And I go, what do you mean? He says, you think, you know, he's going to. And I said, I don't know. I said, but, you know, is he having fun getting better? Dad said, yeah, he seems to enjoy it.

I said, well, let's just let's keep playing out. But I remember that day, like, Dad was, he wanted to know, should I cut this off? If I had been that guy, he said, yay, she's short, he started too late, you know, he's not going to be big enough. He needs to do it. This guy now is a three sport athlete. He's all district, all state, you know, all region, all this stuff. And if he picks the right program, he has the, I mean, right, but I mean, it gets in the right situation. He has the mental capacity and the physical ability to be a true freshman starter at a school.

depending on what the room looks like and stuff like that. But he could land in a situation where they give him the ball as a true freshman. And he'll go get it. But tell the story, Barry, that that young, that kid that we got early, right, who makes the decisions and puts in the work. And you said we meet them at a place to help them become the best player that they in. But we both agree that we work from the space to get the best person. to be the best person that they can be.

And so that kid that we talk about, that kid that we talked about ended up at West Point. Yep. And that kid's now an officer. Yeah. And, you know, his West Point story, I'm not going to tell it, because I'll start crying when he tells me,

because he called me one weekend I was trying to get a hold of him. And, you know, it was unusual he didn't respond. And I'm not only going to go so far. on the story, but he says that, he said to dad. He says, coach, I started to answer call. I was at West Point. And I go, oh, and he started to explain to me what happened when he was offered his appointment.

Just of all the stuff that he did, he's married and all that stuff now. But that moment, when he tells me that story about his appointment when he got offered the appointment at West Point, that was really something. Yeah. Because you believed in it. Because having people that believe in them to look past the shortcomings to the greatness, right? Like it's easy to say too short, too small, to not fast enough, not smart enough. You say those things.

But as Tomlin said, look, we're supposed to run to that. Like, we're supposed to. And so when I hear coaches say, well, they go through all the recruiting stuff. And I'm going, okay, those are pieces. That's clay. That's putty. That's whatever. and then it's your job as a coach to craft it and turn it into art and turn it into the other thing.

So when people tell me that you can't win with all the talent and all the resources, no, that's BS. What you're choosing to do is to take the easy, less traveled way, the mentally lazy way, and allowing kids to struggle and the programs to struggle by not being honest with yourself. Listen, I'm accountable for this. How do I make it? How do I make it work? Here are my pieces. How do I make it work?

Or how do I maximize it? Rather than saying, this is what I know, and all these pieces don't fit, so I'm going to blame it on the kids. And Barry, do the list. We can talk, like, we'll go to break, but I want to say, from that group, that core group of four years of a public school in Virginia,

that at any given, at one, through players who passed through the hands, of Barry Thompson that there were six kids who went to West Point, seven to the Air Force Academy, five to the Naval Academy, and three to Citadel.

And two and eight, two and eight. Right? Because there were people there that just, I said, look, the football part of it is nothing compared to the life part of it.

And we'll give them boundaries and rules. for how to achieve the things that they can control. But, man, coaches can get in the way, bro. They can get in the way. And it takes some really quality people away from that game, away from the team thing that happens, who work on the people.

And before you go to break, and just the lessons, that was on the football side. But on the basketball side, the barriers were removed. It was a whole same group of people. Different, wildly different. Oh, we'll talk about that. When we come back from the break, Barry Thompson here with us on one-on-one.

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