Shaun Newman Podcast - Ep. 46 Lakeland Rustlers - Chris King

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

On todays episode I sat down with Chris King the current coach of the Women's Rustlers Basketball program.  We discuss: - Coaching (a calling from a young age) - Coaching males vs females - Bill Peters resignation & what this means in the coaching world - Gold Ticket Sports 

This is Chris King. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Before I get into today's advertisements, I just thought I would talk a little bit about yesterday. I was down at the Lloydminster Hospital raising money or helping raise money for the new Pixis automated medication dispensing machine. I was down there for 12 hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Our goal for the day was essentially to run a live Facebook feed. for 12 hours and during that time raised $50,000 to help out with us and I'm happy to announce we raised $53,780 yesterday. It was an awesome thing to be a part of and I'm sitting here Tuesday night. I thought I would just add this in in case you missed it. But essentially we ran interviews all day long, live Facebook feed off of the Regional Health Foundation's page. interviewed doctors nurses donors patients you name it we had them on it was a super cool thing to be a part of and I just wanted to give a shout out to everybody in Lloyd

that donated and really cool really appreciate you guys you know interacting with me all day long I had a lot of fun doing it we were on air for 12 hours and if you're listening this you know I like to talk but 12 hours was a journey we'll sit leave it at that but thanks again and And now on with the show. Today's episode is brought to you by Fountain Tire. Can't say enough about the staff there. Can't stand a forth in the boys.

They always treat you right. They are experts in what they do. And I'll harp on this for a couple more days or a couple more episodes. But if you're looking for winter tires, you're that crazy person sliding around still in your summer slicks. Stop on in there and get the boys to hook you up with some winter tires are all all season tires they know all about it they give you the best service they're open monday through friday 730 to 6 p.m saturday 9 to 1 p.m. give them a call 780875 6267

and tell them the podcast sent you boys there like i say are excellent they'll get you hooked up for your winter tire needs next is factory sports um i just stopped in there actually uh on black Friday, picked myself up a twig. And once again, they just got, their stick selection is best in Lloyd right now. Like, nobody competes with the amount of sticks they got in there. And if you're looking for anything, the boys will hook you up and they'll find a way to get it to you. So stop in and see Nate and Holt there at Factory Sports. They're 4903-49th, downtown Lloyd Minster.

They're open Monday through Saturday, 9 to 6 p.m. Sundays 10 to 3.3. It's a fun atmosphere. They've got a good group of guys working in there, and they can hook you up with anything you need. And obviously right now in the middle of hockey season, you need your skate sharpen, you need a new twig, et cetera, et cetera.

Stop in and see the boys. Hockey Day in Saskatchewan is coming to Hillmont. Hillmont is hosting it got awarded it. What that means is January 16th through 19th. There's going to be some festivities going on in the Hillmon rink, and actually a banquet here in town in Lloyd Minster. Thursday, Wade and Friends, Wade Redden, and some Border Kings along with some Hillman alumni, are going to be playing a hockey game.

And then Friday is the banquet. Brian Trauchay and Tom Rennie are going to be headlining that. I believe they have the Dirt Rich brand, dirt rich band. Can't even say it. The Dirt Rich Band headlining and Jordan Pollard, Hillman's own Jordan Pallor, are going to be singing that night as well. On Saturday, they got midget, AAA, men's and women's from North Battleford playing. And the final game in the night is the SGHL, North Battlefield stars versus the Notre Dame Hounds.

North Battleford, I've said it on here several times. Helmont is very lucky to get them in the town. They are nationally ranked, I believe last time I checked. They were top five now, and they've won the SJHL last year, so very, very good hockey teams. and then on Sunday on the 19th is Helmand Minor Hockey followed by Helmand Hitman v. Lashburn Flyers Senior Hockey. Finally, this episode is brought to you by Windsor Plywood. If I've said enough about this table,

every time I walk into it, the table they built me, I can't stop touching it. It's just an absolute thing of beauty. Head to my social media page to see it and you'll understand why. I get Chris talking about it on this episode yet again because it's hard not to talk about, but they do custom work. But I mean, even if you just want to go in and get some wood, building a new deck, stuff like that, they can handle all that.

Windsor Plywood. Stop in and see Carly Clause in the team there. Carly is the man and just love dealing with them. 3,605.51st Ave here in Lloydminster. They're open 8 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Now, I want to do a couple of shoutouts. I haven't done shoutouts in a while, but we had Kyle Tap on last week, and Holy Man, did my first.

phone light up for several days after and I thought I better get some, uh, some shoutouts here. First off, Colin Renette said another beauty of a podcast with Tapper. As a friend of Kyle, I didn't know some things you guys spoke about, which is really cool to know about them. Craig Torrey said, great podcast, boys, that reached out on, on Instagram. Thanks for reaching out, Craig. Corey Dubick said, day, just finished up the TAP podcast, was to me your best one yet. Great insight with Tapper. Honestly, as good as any spit and chicklets or any other type of podcast great job man thanks for that i already messaged core back and said wow that's one heck of a compliment uh to to get

thrown in the legs with uh those guys spitting chicklets is the one i'm talking about they're quite fantastic if you haven't checked them out um jason mills just said a good listen i know why he likes uh why he's so driven uh i know why he likes driving so much man the old mouth it just doesn't want to work tonight folks um And then finally, Easton Obrowski, Obrowski, said, great listen. The guy can coach anybody in any sport and always looking to help improve anyone and everyone. Great job, Sean, asking the right questions at the right time. So thanks for reaching out, guys.

I got one other shout out. I got to give a shout out to Lana Lane. She called me on, I believe it was Friday. Friday morning she gave me a call. And she just kind of wanted to reach out and say she was really enjoying the podcast. and it was a really cool phone call to have. And so I really appreciate her reaching out. She said she started on Vic Juba because she knew who Vic Juba was

and then moved on to Mervyn Morg and then to Brandy Hofer. And she was just really surprised at how good the podcast was. So thanks, Lana, if you're still listening, appreciate you tuning in, appreciate the phone call. It made my day. So thanks for reaching out. Now, if you want to get a shout-up, hit me up. on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

Track down my number like Lana did and text one of my brothers. And we'll get you a shout out on here. This week on the podcast, I have Chris King, and I'm sure I can hear him, and I'm sure he just walked in. So I'll try not to pump his tires too much. I don't want him grinning too much before he walks in here. But he is the current women's Lakeland, Russell's basketball coach. And he's got, like, his career, he's 141, 101,

141 wins, 109 losses. But to start it off, he came into a program that needed a little turnaround, and by the looks of it, he's done that. Even had a perfect season at 24-0. I hope he's not listening right now because that is pretty dang impressive. He was coach of the year in 2014 and 2015, and I'm looking forward to sitting down and catching some insight off of him. You may remember him from Gloves Are Off on the Lloyd Minster News Station,

and him and Lance Phillips used to talk sports all the time and so hopefully you'll enjoy it so without further ado, here we go. Yeah, so when I was thinking about that, and we can talk about this later if you want to, at U of L, our basketball team decided we're going to put in a rec hockey team and our coach didn't know about it.

So we played Monday and Wednesday nights, like 11, 12 or 1 a.m., like all crazy slots. And we ended up winning the rec league at U.S. The Velt because we had a bunch of really good athletes. I didn't realize everyone had played good hockey, but you got a bunch of 6-8, 6-6-6 guys out there that are like clogging. It was pretty tough to score on us, and we had a really good goalie that came out with us. Downside was they posted the pitcher after the first semester on the wall.

So we're playing second semester. Coach doesn't know because Thursday's the day you fly out on the plane, right, and everything like that. So Wednesday night, go play hockey, have a couple beers. You don't ever practice on Thursday. Coach saw the pitcher when he was walking down the hallway. and lost his marbles and threatened to take away everyone's scholarships. Of course, the best players.

So the rest of us, he didn't care about too much, right? But anyways, I was thinking about that. So basketball guys who usually get the rep of not being able to skate, we had nine guys off our U of L men's team playing on a rec hockey team. They're all, like, pretty good players. So I was like, once you get to that level, like think about the guys you played with hockey, I bet over half those guys could do other sports well, right?

We want our rec basketball league. Did you? There you go. We picked up one basketball player to play with us, and we knew one baseball player who played basketball in a former life, and we were just athletic. Then just good athletes. Yeah, we were just athletic. We weren't great basketball players, but you couldn't, our endurance was so good, right?

Like, I mean, we just ran and ran and ran and ran, and ran, and we weren't afraid of a little physicality or anything. I was just like a body check. Yeah. Probably mucked it up, right? It made it tough on people to score. But that's kind of what happened in hockey for us, is we moved the puck really. well we weren't super skilled right we didn't have a bunch of guys toe dragging around people but

we passed the puck well and just worked our butts off yeah it was so taps on to something there i think that's funny that you guys went in interim really did you get in trouble for it no we didn't yeah our coach was not happy we i don't know yeah i don't know how that worked because it was right in our second semester right so we're right in like the grind right before playoffs when we found out he was not he was not thrilled i'm sure he didn't care about me but The good guys, yeah, he cared about. Yeah. Frick, their blonde is good.

Yeah, it's really good, yeah. Sorry, so. You know what? I went in there last week, two weekends ago, and I had this in the pig launcher. I get the pig launcher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good. I've never really had a bad beer there.

No, we're talking about Fourth Moranian right now. It's fantastic. Yeah, and it's, so I went in there that night, and there was like live music, going on. Yep. It's a cool little atmosphere. It's a cool place to go. Yeah.

I wish I could drop the kids off more so I could get there and hang out and chill and have a couple of beers a little more often. I need more babysitters, I think. Because in the summer, all my babysitters leave, right? I got 11 babysitters. Summer hits, they all go home, so I'm a little short on the babysitters in the summer. At least you got 11 to choose from. That's true, yeah.

Better than most of us. Most of us are just like fishing in a dark. If you need one, call me up, and I'm sure there's a bunch of girls that would do it for next to nothing. There you go. Yeah. That's up to sleeve. It's like, what is the podcast done for you in life?

Well, it's made my baby list. Babysitter list, girl. Yeah. Like exponentially. Yeah. You know, get out once in a while, have a beer. If I bring nothing to the podcast, you got a new babysitter. That's right.

That's right. There you go. So I'm joined this week by or with Chris King, coach of the ladies, brussellers, basketball program. I don't know why I have such a hard time. I'm saying Lakeland, Rustlers. Just say women's basketball. Rustler's women's basketball.

Everyone knows Lakeland and Rustlers are together now. I guess so. But if some guys listening from Texas and he's going wrestlers, who are you talking about? That's true. That's true. And the crazy thing is, we had guys reach out from L.A. last week with Kyle Tap. Right. And probably like two, three months ago, I had a guy reached out from Texas.

So, I mean, I don't know. I guess I'm global right now. Yeah. universally known is what you are. Yeah. That's good. And now we're branching into unknown territory for you, right? That's right. If I'm wrong, no basketball.

No basketball content yet. So this could be dangerous. You might get a lot or nothing, yeah, one or the others. Well, actually, I'm really interested to sit down with a coach. I mean, like, you've been coaching now 12 years, right? It's the 12th year, yeah, which seems crazy. Yeah. Very lucky that it got started really early and they didn't fire me early on when I didn't have success and struggled like every coach does. And here I am 12 years later, still here doing it. Well, let's go back a little bit to, I don't know, back to, like, did you always know as a kid you're going to be a coach?

Like, was this something like you're playing and you're like, you know what? I want to coach someday. Yeah, I think so. Like, I think there's a part of me that felt that all the time. And one of the things for me is every sport that I played, coaches would always be like, you're going to coach one day. And, you know, when you're a younger kid, it's kind of annoying because sometimes you're like, okay, whatever.

But when I got into, like, post-secondary, the three programs I was at, all my coaches are like, Kinger, you're going to be a coach. So make sure you take note of this and take note of this. So I think the more you hear it, the more you're like, oh, maybe that is up my alley. Maybe that's something that I should be doing in the future. So, but most of my coaches definitely said that that was something that they saw me doing. So I guess, you know, as an athlete, that's an easy transition.

Once you're done being an athlete, you go through that phase of what's next. I'm not an athlete anymore. What's going on? And then I kind of easily transitioned into the coaching, which I say, started in university and obviously through high school. So that helped that I had a lot of experience in all sports. Now with hockey, we get the benefit of senior hockey all winter long, so I just get to keep playing.

Exactly. Although you play baseball growing up, right? Yeah, so I, well, I played fastball growing up. Or fastball, that's right, yeah. And baseball for the last, I don't know, 10 years with the Blue Jays. So that's great that you get to do that. Well, with basketball, it kind of stops, right? So the first couple years out of university, my university buddies and I, we'd play money tournaments.

So you go on the weekend, three or four grand, you'd bring as many stack guys as you could and try to make some money. But after that, you know, two or three years out, you're not in good shape anymore. So you can't run against ex-college guys or year out. So Lloyd Minster doesn't have a men's league. What was the most money you ever wanted a tournament? Yeah, four grand in a Raymond tournament. The Mormon tournaments are pretty big money. So that was a pretty good party.

And where was that? Raymond down south by Leftbridge. So Raymond McGraths, and it's heavy like LDS, Latter-day Saints area. And that's where a lot of the guys that I played with were from that denomination. So they would always have ins to those tournaments, and it was always big cash prizes. So you would get like U of L guys, UFC guys, American guys, that would come up for these turnings. Very similar to volleyball. Wife's volleyball player.

And there's no, well, I mean, they got their leagues in town here, but you go play tournaments, right? That's right. Go play cash tournaments. And you can win very good money. Yeah, and see, I'm jealous of you guys still playing hockey at a competitive level where, you know, you don't have to practice every day, but it's still good hockey. And all the guys out there have played good hockey, right? Yeah, well, the league's continuing to get better, I think.

You know, when the Border Kings aren't there, all that talent has to go somewhere if you still want to play. Right. And so now it gets spread out amongst all the little talents. And, yeah, you guys have benefited from that, right? Everybody has. I would argue everybody has, you know, within a, 45-minute radius of Lloyd. I mean, it doesn't matter you got guys who are from,

well, take PV this year. They got Jetland Houcher playing. Right. And he led the SJHL in scoring, I believe. That's a pretty nice pickup for it. AJ. Break. Should know that.

But anyways. And now they're under, they just lost the first game this weekend. And their team like three years ago. Didn't win. Didn't win. Yeah. Right?

And that's a guy, I would assume, if the Kings were here, he'd be walk on and, you know, Yeah, playing there. There be no brain or form, right, to go play AAA. Yeah. That's the interesting thing about hockey in Canada, right? There's guys everywhere that played really good hockey. And you look at our, it's basically a rural area.

You think about in the big cities, the guys that wind up playing there, all the ex-NHL areas are dub and yeah. It's nuts. It's crazy. And obviously there's a reason that's Canada sport, right? Like, everyone does it. It's so accessible, right? Like, I mean, think of how many months.

I mean, and this has been an odd. winter but you think of how many months we are in dark cold and there's just ice everywhere right like i mean if you really want ice you can just go out and yeah you play pawn hockey all the time and i was i was thinking about that driving out here you think about growing up if you weren't playing street hockey you're playing pawn hockey if you were playing pawn hockey you're playing pawn hockey you were always just playing hockey and that's i guess the interesting path for me is yeah i never played basketball till grade seven and then i had a coach that kind of I played a little in grade seven, and he's like, I think it was grade eight.

He's like, you're going to be good at basketball. So why didn't he think you're going to be good at basketball? I don't know what it was. So for me, my dad taught me grade seven to 12. Was this your dad telling you? No, it wasn't my dad. No, no, he was on the other end. He likes to tell me how shit I am and stuff.

He still does to this day. He likes to cut me down. So he had me history in gym. So what happens when your dad's a teacher is they find out everything, right? So I was a little bit of a meathead, I would say. So if I did bad on a test, I'm getting lectured on the way home, walking home from school, right? Get a girlfriend holding hands, you're getting lectured. So you're always getting lectured.

And I remember this one day in grade eight. I was leaving basketball practice. We're walking home hockey practice was that night. And my dad gave me the, what the heck happened at school today? And for me, it's just like, oh, God. Like, I'm trying to think, like, what happened? And he's like, no, a basketball practice, what happened? And in my head, I'm like, nothing happened.

Like, we just had basketball practice. And that was the day he said, Mr. Carter said he's never seen anyone play like that in junior high. And for whatever reason, that moment stuck with me. And then all of a sudden, someone thought I was really good at something that I hadn't done before. And then I took to it. I went to a basketball camping summer of grade 9.

And then grade 10, it kind of started taking over. And luckily, my dad was a teacher. So every morning I'd go into the school, we'd get there at about 645. I'd shoot by myself. until about 8.30, so I shoot for an hour and a half by myself every single day, all day. And then eventually I had one buddy that came in. Dwayne Lesner, Kits' got a boy, came in and rebounded for me.

But that's kind of how I shifted. I still loved hockey, but basketball was new. I felt like it was a way of expression. Hockey at that point. I didn't leave for hockey when I had the chance to leave. My parents wouldn't let me leave. And I think that kind of stalled the hockey part a little bit. You know what it's like when you're in a small town, right?

It is what it is, right? And all your friends are coming up the whole way, and I could have played midget B hockey for a couple more years, and I shifted to basketball, and then it just kind of took off from there. It's a weird thing. Like that one comment kind of set me away from hockey. And I was a fine hockey player,

but all of a sudden basketball became really interesting to me. It's crazy with a little bit of... It's that one teacher, that one comment. And just infusing a little confidence, right? Like just a little... Yeah, because if it would have been the normal talk that... you were shitty, then I probably would have just... Or even if you were just average, right?

Like, you get no compliments. Yeah, you're not like, wow, you're amazing at this. Yeah, I would have played it. That's it. I always think back to my hockey career, right? I went on to play lots of hockey. Yeah. But I quit my last year of midget.

I was done. Right. Working a job in Lloyd for West Cannes, washing semis. Making money. Making money. And partying and whatever else. Like, I just didn't care. I was burnt out of hockey.

if anyone can believe that now knowing me. Right. And I got a phone call on a Friday from the coach of what used to be LaRange, Larry. He was out in Ontario. And it was actually my dad who called. And he said, hey, you remember that coach from last year? I'm like, yeah, whatever. Like, I'm just thinking of him about the party that night.

And he's like, yeah, he wants to come play out in Ontario. And I always remember that because it was like a light switch just flipped. It was that quick. Boom. Yeah, I'll go. Hung up the phone, walked in my boss's office, quit. And by Monday I was on my way to Ontario. And up until that point, I didn't give two craps.

And it's crazy how many guys you have sit in here who talk about their careers and going to places. I go, well, why did you go there? Asked that they wanted me. They were the first team to want me. Yeah. Right? Like, that's crazy. Yeah.

But we all share an experience lab. 100%. Especially on the mail side. And I said that when I was writing into you is, I think on the mail side of sports, if you get that encouragement, someone wants you to play and you're probably the same way as me. You want me to play hockey where? Okay, great, I'm coming, right? Sam is basketball. Someone comes and you're recruiting a male basketball player? You want me to go to Lloyd Minster? Sure. Yeah, I don't care where it is. I want to play.

Like, you want to go play. Whereas females, coaching females, not necessarily the case. There's a lot of things that need to line up for a female to make a leap like that. It'd be much harder for an 18-year-old female to leave and go across the country to play basketball. I would bet from my experience. so think about how lucky that is that you had that opportunity and you could seize it right yeah yeah it was a special special memories right and like just something that sticks out to you i mean you get that word of encouragement and then you probably do what most kids wouldn't do because i can't maybe i can maybe i can't i can't imagine going into the you know you say you're

lucky to have a teacher as a parent so you get into the gym but most kids wouldn't fall follow it up by going in the gym and shooting every morning. Yeah, and so that's one of those things that Mike being from Ontario, he was a basketball guy and he was a basketball coach in high school. So he was supposed to coach us through high school and he had kids and obviously wanted to spend, you know how it is, wanted to spend more time with his kids, but he just kept saying to me, if you want to be good, you got to come in the gym, you got to put in the time. And for me, I was like, okay, how much?

I kind of have that addictive personality where once you get a little taste of success, you want more and you keep working harder and harder. And he just kept saying, these are the things to do. And every once in a while he'd come in because he worked in Kit Scottie, but lived in Lloyd. So he would get in about 8.15,

and he had watched for a little bit and then give you a few pointers and my dad would rebound if he was there. Usually he'd like make the pot of coffee for the teachers in the morning, read the Amitin Journal, right? But hey, my dad let me in and he knew it was important to me.

And as I got older, grade 11 and 12, it was starting to bring my buddies in that played with me, right? So all of a sudden we had a really good team in a small town in grade 12 because those guys were starting to come in the gym just because one person was doing it. Yeah. So. How did you guys do that here?

We lost the provincial semi-final to picture but the host and then lost the bronze medal game. So that's the furthest kid Scotty's ever made it. I don't want to be the guy that's talking about high school stuff. But yeah, so we finished fourth and two-way. That's still cool. Yeah, we were ranked third the whole year. We beat Lloyd Comp real bad twice. So that was like the highlight.

They kind of chirped us a bit, and we got two exhibition games and beat them pretty bad. So I think that's like a feather in kids got his hat for having 100 kids and beating the long time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, it was great. And, you know, after that, my brother came through, he was in grade 10 when I was in grade 12, and basketball just like fell off. It was just one group of guys that there was seven, eight of us that played volleyball and basketball and did everything all the way up.

And then when we graduated my brother's group, there was hardly anyone. So it's just that special group that you get going through a school. And you know, you see that in like football or volleyball or even hockey when you get a group of guys that stay all the way through and do things together. So the joy of being in a small town, I guess. Yeah. And it's always cool when you can see a program or a community or whatever it is make it extend longer than one group of guys. Yeah. And the spot that always comes to mind is where Ken Rutherford's from, Paradise Hill.

They've been volleyball. Dominating. Right? Yeah. How many years? I don't know. It's a long time. 20 years probably.

Probably. I can't speak to them right now, but every time I hear about pretty self volleyball, they've always been good. I think we saw them in mega volley finals. We had a really good volleyball team in grade 11 and 12. I think we saw them there and beat them there, but they were like, I don't ever remember them not being good or not being one of the best in Saskatchewan. And when he came through, they had a bunch of CIS guys. That's crazy. That's crazy.

That's crazy for little towns. You're producing like U of S, all Canadians out of that place. Yeah, unbelievable. That's been some of the interesting things about doing this podcast is now getting to, that's a guy I want to talk to is Aaron Canfield, who went on to play, right? And he was a superstar. But shut out to Aaron Canfield if he's listening. Stud, yeah.

He won't let anyone know that, but yeah, he was a stud, yeah. But doing this and talking to people from all the little different towns, you find out how much crazy talent come out of. little pockets. Yeah. And actually one that, I don't love to give Lashford too much crap because I play them still in hockey.

But my wife teaches them whenever, and the amount of programs that they've had successful there, not just one. Like we're talking through hockey, fastball, rugby, I'm sure I'm missing a couple. They've been excellent. And it goes back like 30, 40 years.

Like that is unbelievable. When you think about back in the day when these small towns were hiring teachers. They were hiring teachers. They were looking for people to coach their programs. And I think if you look at those programs

that were successful, like Kit Scottie's been pretty good athletically for a small town as well, you hired guys that could coach. You hired either hockey coaches or volleyball coaches or basketball coaches. And all the towns you talked about, they had a coach that stayed there

and that became a culture for an extended period of time. And eventually that culture grows and it kind of recruits for itself. Yeah, it recruits for itself. Like those guys playing volleyball, every other kid coming through was playing volleyball. They were doing it, right?

Well, Ken talked about it how, you know, lots of kids in Canada go to hockey because they see everybody playing hockey and like really good hockey. I want to be that guy when I go there, so I'm going to play hockey. And he said in Paradise Hill growing up, volleyball was it for him. So I watched these guys go through and they are amazing volleyball players. I want to do that. Yes, and that's what you're exposed to. Like for me, there was a guy three years ahead of me that,

Kerry Cooper that played college, and I think he was the first guy from Kitt's got to play college. But that was like my measuring stick, right? I'm going to be better than him. I want to do what he did, right? But that was just one single guy with those guys, every two or three years, they're pumping out college and university guys all over. So that's the culture.

And I think that's so cool when you think about how those small towns brought in coaches like that, or they were already there, and it just became, that's what Lashburn's about, or that's what, you know, all these small towns are about. That's what they do. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

And that's a sidetracked moment for a second. But going back to your start me. So they only said you'd be a coach, right? But I mean, you go on to play, you play what, Lakeland for two years? Yeah, played Lakeland for two and then University of Lafbridge after, yeah. So my freshman year is actually at Concordia. I went to Concordia out in high school. my coach got fired there

and so the new coach coming in was bringing in a lot of guys so I got the feeling I was going to be on the outs there there was no team at Lakeland at the time Lakeland had never had basketball only volleyball and I had an opportunity

through Canada games and fastball to go to Australia to play fastball so I took it obviously because I had a new coach coming in so I was in Australia for the year playing fastball and I ended up playing in their NHL their hockey league down there

You just walked on to a hockey I know, I know Well, let's talk about us They call it NHL, it's their national hockey league There was only six teams back then So it was pretty loose It was pretty loose So you went to Australia for what, a year?

I was there for 10 months, yeah 10 months Yeah, yeah So the goal was Sitting in the dead of winter here How nice was Australian Do you ever daydream about it? Yeah, all the time

So, and I'll tell you this story Because when I went down there for ball you get to play like the winter league and the summer league for ball. In the winter league, it's more of like a local thing. Summer League we drive down to Sydney. I was in Newcastle on the East Coast. So we would drive down to Sydney for our league games against all the state teams, lots of like the team Australia guys and stuff.

But anyways, you run into a ton of Canadian guys in the local league. Married Australians or came down, whatever. A bunch of them played hockey and some of them were playing on the Newcastle, North Stars. they had lost an import one of the guys went home or something so they asked if I wanted to try out if I had played and I'm like well I played like bantam I didn't play after bantam

because basketball took over and I quit they said okay we'll give you a tryout come put on gear we have an import spot because he had six spots so I went for a skate and they're like oh yeah you're in I'm like okay so I phone my dad and say hey I need my hockey equipment shipped to Australia so I'm not going to lie the entire time you're talking I'm going

where did you get hockey gear from? Did you just go splurge and buy all new? No, they sent it from home. I asked them to pick up. This is back in the wood stick day, so I was still using wood sticks. Other guys were using one pieces, but...

Kids listening to this, don't even know what they did. Yeah, Bauer 30-30 Lindross. That's what it was. Just for the record. Just for the record. But yeah, so anyways, ended up doing that. So when you go to practice,

guys are either wearing flip-flops and shorts because it's about 30 degrees or they're not wearing shoes at all. A lot of the local Australian guys don't wear shoes of practice. So they'll just come in with their bag on their shoulder, barefoot coming into the hockey room. Now that's something that I just, I will never get that out of my mind. And then you leave and it's smoking hot and you got to carry your bag back to your house. Yeah, 30 degree heat.

Yeah, very cool experience. So I ended up down there for a year. And when I was down there, somehow I got a phone call from Phil Allen, the legendary Phil Allen. He must have got a hold of my brother or my dad somehow and got the house number. in Newcastle and he phoned me and he said we're going to have a team at Lakeland next year it's the first first team ever would you want to be a part of it for basketball and I was like yeah heck yeah like I'm in didn't never had met him before net like he just cold called me so when I got back the week after I got back I came back just in time for the fastball season um up here in Canada so end of

may I came back so I was playing juniors at the time in Grand Prairie and went in and had two workouts with him. He offered a scholarship. I signed right away and that's how I ended up back in Lakeland. So I got to play on the first team ever at Lakeland after being in Australia thinking maybe basketball is done, not really knowing what I'm doing. Kind of similar to your story, to be honest. I went down there to play ball and I ended up getting a phone call about basketball and making a different life for yourself. Yeah, yeah. Like just took you on a completely different path. Pardon the interruption, folks. Here is your IHD innovative question of the week. Chris King Liss off his dream team

if he could have a team on the court who he'd have. Who is the first guy he lists, even before Michael Jordan? Send me off the answer to that via Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Hit me up at Sean Newman Podcast at gmail.com. Any of those ways with the answer,

you're entered 10 times for opportunity at a $50 gift card to home hardware this week. All right? Now back to the show. Yeah, and coming back home was the best thing that ever happened because, as you know, when you get to play in front of friends and family and you got 15 or 20 people out at every game and you got the support system and the fact that we were the first team ever, it was a pretty cool experience and something that I tell my players about all the time because that second year,

we lost the conference final, so I always talked to them about that banner up there and how much it sucks looking at that banner every day I come to coach them, no one that maybe we could had done something a little different or pushed a little bit more and I'd be looking at a gold medal instead of a silver medal on the wall every day so that that drives me a little bit nuts but it was a very cool experience coming back and playing to uh at lakeland and then I ended up going to university university left bridge um finishing there and then I ended up back at lakeland again assistant uh assistant coaching so what happened was the women's coach Kevin huber was our assistant coach when I played and so he took over them the women's job from Jackie Bender

And so when I was in LaFbridge, he said, hey, can you do recruiting for me? I just, I'm having troubles getting kids, new program, you know the deal. So I sent two girls from my gym class, my basketball pack class, sent information. They got in contact and these two girls ended up going to Lakeland and end up being their better players. So it ended up, while I was in university, I was recruiting for Lakeland as well. So when I was finished playing, naturally he offered me assistant coaching job with him, which I'll use the word, job loosely. Assistant coaches don't really get paid in ACAC, but I came back to do that. And from there, he ended up getting fired that year. So there I am a 24-year-old with one-year

assistant coach. And an opportunity to become head coach. Opportunity to become a head coach. So I applied. And at the same time, I was still obviously helping coach the team. They actually let him go in December. And they gave him the option of leaving right there, finishing the year off. And he decided to finish the year off. So it was an awkward three months for the three assistants because we didn't really know what was going on. At the same time, I was asked to recruit for next year's team. Meanwhile, the job wasn't posted yet. So I said to our athletic director, I'll recruit, but I don't even know if I'm getting this job. Who am I recruiting these kids for? Which it's hard enough to recruit as it is, but without a coach, it's almost impossible. So recruiting didn't go well.

They ended up hiring me in May a couple months after the season, which is incredibly late for basketball. And then I had to try to get a team together. And as a 24-year-old male, recruiting 17, 18, 19, 20-year-old. They didn't go that well? No, it didn't. Like, shocking. Like, and I talk about this with my wife all the time. Every single conversation I had, the dad or the mom would be like, how old are you?

And I'm like, well, I'm 24. And right away. That conversation was basically done. So this is one of the reasons why I had to grow up facial hair. So I looked older because I have a baby, much like yourself, baby face. Oh, you're saying I have baby face? Look at this guy, sweet talk on listeners, eh? You know how it is.

It sucks. I got to be honest with you. You've got it before. No, I have not. I've got the complete opposite. I was 18 years old sitting, I'm going to think about this. I was 18 year old sitting at a, I wasn't a rookie party, but it was a party for our hockey team.

Right. And I had a 17-year-old girl asked me if I was the coach. Well, my question becomes how intelligent was this female at the time. Well, we're not going to go down that, though. Fair, but if anything... They asked, though. Yeah, I've been asked if I'm 40 more than I've ever been told of a baby face.

That's fair. So I'm evening it out for you. Yeah, I'd probably be the opposite. I probably could have taken it at 24. Nobody would ever question my age. Yeah, that makes me jealous. Yeah. See, I was just getting into facial hair at 24.

So that was the issue. The last year of university, I was figuring out how to grow up. You were growing facial hair thinking you were looking older, but you were just making yourself look younger. It's like, this guy can't even grow a proper beard. Yeah, no, it was backfiring. So, yeah, so that's how I ended up at Lakeland. And I'm very thankful that that first year out there, actually,

I was lucky Lisa Tomitis, the coach of U of S was really kind to me. The previous coach, I think, had some bad goals, with some players in Saskatoon. So she was very helpful. And Dave Taylor, Eovar, was also very helpful for me just being new and not knowing what's going on. So those two basically, for the last 12 years, give me the lay of the land.

And they're two of the top programs in the country every single year. Obviously, Lisa being the national team coach, but they basically tell me, here's who we're going to recruit. Here's who we think would be good for you, and you should go after these kids. So it makes my job a lot easier. Sorting through. I'm not chasing after kids that are too good for us, right?

So, yeah, so that was my first year out recruiting, and like I said, didn't go well. And as I heard when I walked in here, you mentioned the first couple of years. Yeah, four and 20 is rough. Four and 20, four and 20, six and 14. But after that, you've been... Turn around, yeah. Been lights out. Yeah.

So a couple of things happened, I would say. Culture change is very tough. So when I took the job, I basically gave him like a Stalin five-year plan. I said it's going to take five years for us to be good. And I wasn't even sure I could make that happen, to be honest, just because the program had been so weak. And in that third year there, when we went 6 and 14, that actually we made playoffs because the north and the south was combined.

So if you won a game versus the south, the points were doubled, and all of our wins came against South teams. So we actually had enough points to make playoffs. We lost all the single point games, but won all the double point games. That year, my AD came down and kind of said, like, hey, you got to make playoffs this year. And I said, well, yeah, the goal is in five years. We're going to be in playoffs.

And he's like, no, it needs to happen this year. And I kind of, I definitely got heated. And I said, what do you mean? He's like, just, you got to make playoffs. And I'm like, well, this wasn't the deal. And he's like, yeah, we're done this conversation. So luckily we squeaked in. And that was the year we picked up a couple Americans out of the states,

which made an impact to us, great kids. And then from there, everything kind of picked up. So let's talk about your first year. in particular. I'm just curious. Young guy, were you at all, like, just a ball of nerves? Or did you handle it in stride in the way you went? No, I think I was probably the classic young coach in the sense that I was overconfident.

Like, I thought I was going to fix everything all at once, which is obviously a fatal air looking back at it. So I was probably too mean, too hard, like, just too aggressive trying to prove yourself, right? I think I went over the top that way where I probably, should have been somewhere in between where I am now and where I was then. So I wasn't particularly nervous. The first game I remember, I was extremely nervous. Lucky for me, we got our butts kicked by like 25.

So the nerves go away real quick when you're getting dummied. But a lot of hard lessons. And a lot of coaches when I came into the league, and I don't know if it's the same in hockey, but they were definitely sending a message. They would run the score up on us. Like, not needed. If you're going to beat us by 20, that's fine. But they would press us right till the end.

And we weren't very good. We just, we weren't good at all. I had whatever was left over, and a couple of kids I recruited, right? So when you mean they were sending you a message, what was the message being sent? I think their message was if you want to be in this league, like you got to get the talent to be in this league because they could easily just beat us by 20, but instead they would roll us by 50 or 40 and press us and make us just look, it absolutely embarrass us, right?

Try and get you out of the league is what they were trying to do. Yeah, and to me, that's poor sportsmanship and also to me as a coach, we had the situation this weekend. What are you actually teaching your own team? If you're playing a weaker team, why aren't you really focusing on yourself, getting better for playoffs? Now, it is what it is.

I learned the lessons that we weren't good enough, but I also took away a lot of things from that first year, and I think going into the second year, I decided, okay, I'm going to bring in a ton of transfers. We're going to get way better. Problem with a ton of transfers is they usually come with a lot of baggage. so now I'm 25 dealing with some issues that

still to this day I'm shocked that happened that year but a couple really good players and Nicole Akry out of Saskatchewan she was playing in the state she came back she was pretty good for us Amber Cassian Cassian's sister was really good for us so we had some good players that year

but we just team chemistry wasn't great and you could feel it was getting closer but with some of the transfers we had some interest interesting girl fights and team issues and yeah all this lovely probably none of which you're able to share no I'm gonna share it when I write my book I I promise you that I'm just yeah well here's one for you I won't share the names but just two of my better players came together so they were dating each other which I didn't know okay I probably should ask but I didn't and then one of them ended up deciding to date a male on the men's basketball team and so that

caused an epic fight. A giant rift. Yeah, epic fight between the two and then it just, from there, it just went downhill because then the girls are picking sides. And any time that that situation happens where if you're dating someone, they break up and it involves another teammates, whether it's male or female,

it's never good, right? Like if me and you are teammates and I end up dating your girlfriend taking her away from you, it's not going to go well. No, no. And there's there's a code, I think playing as long as I did, and guys, I think there's a code on the guy's side. You just don't do it.

Like I know, guys still do. Yeah, okay, maybe they do. See, and the teams I played on it just never happened. You just didn't do it. It takes special, uh, I, I think that's a culture thing. So, if you had a turnover like you were having, you would, you would see that. I guarantee you would see that on men's side women. Right.

You saw it on the women's, I guarantee men's side. Right. If you have a stable structure, if some guy came in and wanted to do it, you would see that, you would see it. that it gets snuffed out real quick right because guys wouldn't stand for that and the culture around the group that's there wouldn't stand for right and you'd see that guy on the outs and probably getting transferred the next year it's probably the way it's work yeah which is what it should be that's actually a great point so and that just leads to like where we are in the chemistry right because I like both the kids but that issue and especially for me just starting to coach females

like that among other things coming up as a young coach you're like holy crap this is what this is what I have to deal with daily like is this happening all the time and then you start asking around it happens way more than you think you know no way you could ever prepare yourself for that no and even now to this day when guys ask me what it's like and I tell them stories that happen in practice or just stuff that happens like yeah it doesn't it doesn't make sense like just dealing with with the feminine issue altogether like I can tell you right now I'm pretty well versed in the difference of all the birth control methods the different types of pills and how it's going to affect your hormones because we go through it so much

right like girls come in and a certain types affecting their skin or certain like types affecting their their mood like you know what I thought of bringing you on this podcast I didn't think we'd get into birth yeah there you go yeah no but it's just one of like a thousand things that that ends up being discussed and I think it's because our my girls trust they look at me now it's like a father figure right so they come in with these issues and a lot of them if you think about it like some of the issues that happen in college male or female you probably don't want to go to your mom or dad to talk to?

Guaranteed you don't. So a lot of times it comes to me, and I will say like early on, there was like a lot of trips to talk to our doctor or nurse to make sure like they're getting the right information and pointing the kids in the right direction, right? Same thing with like counseling services, making sure they're going the right direction. So it's a real eye opener because on the men's side, you don't like, it's pretty like white and black when you're coaching men and when you're in a men's program. This is right, this is wrong, you screw up, you're getting punished.

There's shades of gray, I would say, when you're coaching females. And I think the biggest thing with them is, just like males, you have to be honest with them all the time. And if you give them a little slack, they're going to take them out. So you have to be honest all the time. You have to, like, tow your line, whatever your culture line is all the time, because they will push it and push it and push it. And I would say early on, I didn't really know what my culture line was. I only knew what I had been coached, right?

So I was coached this way. This is what I believe in. And the longer that I coach, the more I'm like, oh, I actually don't really believe in that, but I believe in this, right? What's really important? Because I think any coach can figure out three or four things that are truly important to their team and the rest of it probably not as important. You had mentioned when we kind of went through preliminary questions about writing lists

on different things you like, didn't like. How much of that, like, so now you got, I don't know, 10 years of list or whatever it is. Maybe you could explain it to listeners first. Yeah. I was just curious, how much of that original writing then translated in the stuff that, like, worked? Or did you just, like, was it just crossing things out? Like, man, I thought it would this work, but it sucks. Or maybe you could just go a little into it.

Yeah, and I think that's an important part of growth is going through that process. So, for example, being able to play for three different coaches was fabulous for me in post-secondary. So my first coach, really nice guy. Sometimes the players walked on a little bit, but very nice guy, like good person, like really good values. I really appreciated that in him. When I came to play for Phil, absolutely unbelievable recruiter, unbelievable motivator,

like the stories he told, the things that he could say to get you going, unbelievable. X's and O's. We didn't really have to do too much X's and O's. Like he was fine, but we had the best players. So when you got the best players, you don't have to run too much stuff.

Then I go to University of Leverage and Mike Conley, amazing X's and O's. Really well prepped. To this day, I could probably run you U of A, U of S's, U of R's offense, just from running the scout team all the time. So you kind of look at those three different guys, and they're all very successful coaches, but they all kind of had different strengths.

So when I started coaching, I was saying, okay, I want to do some of the stuff that Phil did in terms of motivating, but I really like the X's and O's that Coach Conley did, right? And then as you get into it, I think the biggest thing is no one really creates ideas, right? You steal it from everywhere. Yeah. So seeing what works, taking it, maybe you try it.

Okay, that didn't work, but maybe we can tweak it for our personnel. And I'm a big believer in a lot of coaches in post-secondary are system coaches. This is the way they coach. This is what we do here in our program. This is it. The way that I coach is I bring in the players that I think are best, and we run different offense and defense every year to fit that personnel. It's important for me coaching-wise to put them in the best positions.

So if I ran the same offense for 10 years, there's only one style of player that's going to work in those positions. Well, every kid's different. Every kid has a different skill set. And for a while there early on, we're turning over so many kids because we only had so many degrees that kids were staying for one, two, three years and leaving. So you couldn't build it for five years. Are you having more kids now stay for five years?

Yeah. So now we've added a lot of degrees at Lakeland. Lakeland's done a really good job of expanding the academics. Which has been a giant help, I assume? Oh, huge. Yeah. Austin, the women's volleyball coach and myself are probably reaping the rewards first, just getting our kids to stay.

So I have one fifth year, three, fourth years, three third years. Yeah. And that's giant. Huge. And being old wins in any league, I don't care what league you're in. But it used to be if I could get a third year or two third years, I thought, okay, like, we'll be all right. Whereas now, you know, the poor freshmen that come in right now, we have really talented freshmen. But when you're competing against the 22, 23-year-old.

It's good for them, though. Yeah. And you know what? Their growth has been huge because they got to get better. And they got to earn it, too. Yeah. Right? Like you, just to walk in and play, not even just to have the mentorship of a fifth year, right?

Somebody who's been in the league playing that and knows what it takes, et cetera, et cetera, all that experience to be able to give that to a freshman coming in, right? Well, and it takes it with entitlement, right? Because right now I find that kids think that they deserve to play college. They think they deserve to play a ton. That's not the way it is. So one of the things when I'm recruiting kids is, I'm very honest with them. and I say, listen, I want you. I think you'd be great in our program.

I can't guarantee any playing time. I can't guarantee anything other than you're going to compete. And if you're good enough at the end of the week, you're going to get a jersey. You will get a shift. And then you've got to earn the second shift. How many girls do you have on your team? What's your raw? So this year is really short.

We got 11 this year because we have a big recruiting class coming in this year. So I didn't feel it was fair to take player 12, player 13 on our roster, and then end up cutting them the next year as our big. recruiting class comes in I think that's that's a cowardly move to be honest so I'd rather have a short bench and have everyone stay in the program then bring a kid in change their life for a year and let them go right 11 yeah and when you say how many do you dress for game we can dress 12 so most years I have 12 or 13 kids okay okay most years yeah but I'm just curious when you're going around telling girls I can't guarantee anything chances are

that well this year all 11 are gonna dress 100% yeah and they're gonna play so everyone's played in every game. It's something that it's nice about basketball. It's nice about hockey. That you can give them a couple minutes here or there just to get their feet wet. And if it's awful, okay, great. We'll come back to it next day. If it's good, we'll go back to you.

But it does lose me some recruits, if I'm being honest, because there's coaches out there that are guaranteeing this much scholarship. You're going to start. You're going to get this many minutes. And I think that's BS. No coach can guarantee you that. And if they are, they're either a liar or their program's terrible. Those are the two options.

So I just say if you want to be a part of something, you're going to have to earn it here. We're ran like a CIS program, the way that we train, and it's going to be tough. And if you can make it, great. Because it's not for everyone. You know what it's like. When you get to college, it's not for everyone.

Like, not everyone can cut it, right? These kids are, what, we practice, four days a week for two hours a day, and then we got an hour skill session twice a week. We got an hour wait session twice a week. We got film twice a week. There you go. There's 16 hours in four days like this. Full boat.

Yeah. You got to enjoy it. Yeah. You got to crave it, yeah. And if you don't, you're weeded out pretty quickly right now. So, yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, the entitlement piece, because it's when you come in and you walk into something, you don't have to earn it. You never appreciate it. Absolutely.

Isn't that right? Yeah. So, and that's one of the good things. And like I said, I'll speak to Austin's program. They do such a great job on the women's volleyball side of the older players play and the younger players know, like, hey, I got a way. wait my turn, wait my turn, right? Which would kill me as a basketball player because some of those girls don't get to go on the floor,

but they've created the culture that, hey, in your second year, you might get a shot, but your third year, now you'll start playing, and hopefully by your fifth year, you're an all-star for us, right? So there's like the growth path for us. It's like, if you're good, you're good, you're playing, but I can't guarantee you how much you're going to play. Part of me just loves the challenge of that.

I feel like probably wouldn't be in the gym every day. Who knows? want to be playing as first year 100% well you you probably have a similar mentality to me you have a high f you factor right when people tell you can't do things i believe nothing is impossible right so you challenge me and i want to go and prove out yeah yeah challenge accepted yeah great just keep telling me i can't do it i'm gonna work harder and harder to prove your own and i that's something i talk to my kids about lots is that that that's an important attribute to have not only in sports but in life to have that you know what i can do any i'm going to prove someone wrong i'm going to do something wrong i'm

to do this for me. I'm going to do it for the team, right? I don't think enough kids have that high FU factor right now that I see. It's an interesting time we're living in. I always wonder, I always wish I could, you know, I asked the time machine question on it. I'm pretty much every guess now. Got suggested by a guy who listened, Lance Caldek, shout to him. And I really enjoy it, Because that's specific to go back to a time where you can, whatever, see whatever you want to see. But I always fantasize about, right now I'm 33. I've got three kids under four. Well, this is getting slowly closer to four.

It is a circus on the best of days, right? But by this time, my dad had five. That's unbelievable. And we had just moved into a house. So before this, we're living in a trailer. With five kids, one bathroom. Like, can you end just going back and just seeing, like, you know, I just love to go if he was sitting around with a couple of buddies going, man, we live in interesting times. And I'm just happy to get away for a beer and, you know, got the mother-in-law in town, which I do right now.

And mother-in-law and my wife are watching children and I'm sitting here talking to you, right? We're just like, and the world's going to hell in a handbag. Right. Right. Or if we truly are just in an interesting times. because, you know, the entitlement thing and kids getting, you know, whatever it is, mentally soft or, you know, I'm sure if you went back 100 years and talked to my grandfather when he came over, my great-grandfather when he came over here, I bet you he'd think I'm pretty soft right now. That's something, I agree with you 100%. Every generation thinks the next generation soft, right? And if you were talking to your dad about, you know, growing up and having five kids, it wouldn't be anything to him because that's just what it was.

that's what I had to do to survive. That's how it was going to be. Right? And the generation before, everyone, like I remember my dad saying how soft kids are when I was coming through, right? And now I'm coming through. I'm saying the same thing. And one of the things I think about is, you know, are the kids that's softer?

Are we parenting different? Well, life has gotten better. And as life gets better, you naturally get softer. I'm quoting that, right? It's easier. Right? Everything gets easy. Yeah, 100%.

Right? Like, you just, I go, come from a farming family. When my dad was young, they were still throwing square bales. And, I mean, I know there's farmers listening right now. I go, we still throw it square. But you know what I mean? Right. Like, now they got ways that you never have to lift a square bail ever again.

Right. You don't need to if you don't have to. Right. You used to make your own milk. You used to make your own butter, et cetera, et cetera. Now you just go to a store, buy it. It's all sitting there. Right.

Right. you bring it down. What did somebody say? You used to have to make grilled cheese. Now you can just go buy pre-made grilled cheese, meaning kids don't know how to make grilled cheese anymore. That's ridiculous. Well, I'll tell you what.

Well, I think it's ridiculous too, right? But if you, it's the generation thing. The fact that I don't know how to do very simple things on the farming side of it now, I can guarantee my ancestors are just laughing at me, calling me just like, look at this kid. That's fair. But they would be blown away. what you do know how to do absolutely as the times change yes so on that cooking point i had a

freshman that tried to cook a turkey in the microwave her freshman year so so like that's that's the type of like you know moving out on your own no one's taught her so she phoned me and said like hey this i don't know if this turkey's done how long do you put it in for put it in the microwave i'm like oh my god so you can't do that yeah so i had to go like just a mess turkey blue like just yeah but that's that's the way it is with some of these kids. It just the skills that, and I remember growing up, we had a home at class and egg class. Like, we had an egg class.

I was a town kid, but like, we had an egg class. Like, we were learning about the crops and cattle and stuff. Like, that was an actual class. And I don't know if that happens anymore, but I think now, what's the one thing I want from my kids? And the one thing I want more than anything is I want them to fail. I want them to be cut from something. I want them to fail something so they know what that feels.

like because I think a lot of the kids that I recruit now, great kids and I love them and they're on my team, but a lot of these kids have not been cut from anything. So their first failure experience is in post-secondary, right? They've made all the provincial teams. They've been the best in their high school teams. And now they come here and now they're coming off the bench on a pretty strong team. But mentally they're really struggling because they're not the best.

And they're struggling every day in practice. And they got to, as you said, they've got to figure out how to be better. So that's one of the things I think about as a coach and a dad is how important that's going to be for my kids to at some point experience that failure. Well, failure is not fun. No. I don't like failing right now when I'm 33. I hate it. Yeah, it's awful.

But you learn from it. You do learn from it. Let me ask you this. When you played hockey, would you learn more from the losses or the wins? I remember the wins more. I hate losing. Yeah. Absolutely.

But if you lost, I bet you it was twice as hard to lose the next night. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And for me, and you talked about that 24-0 season, we lose in the conference seven-finals. Let's talk about the 24-0 season. As soon as I'm saying, well, I know you didn't get the result you wanted. But you went 24-0.

That is like, you know, I'll put you in the same boat as Tom Brady. Tom Brady had the perfect season losing the Super Bowl. I'm sure he hates talking about that season. But perfection is like 24-0, man, from a team that was 4-20. Yep. So that team was... How many... In year eight, you go 24 and all.

For the listeners, you start in 2008-09. You go 4-20, 4-20, 6-14. Then you turn around in year 4, you go 14 and 6, 11, 10, 11, 10, 22, and 2, 24-0. Yeah. You can see the growth there. Like, you can actually... Yeah. Just in the numbers.

And it was really exciting to be in that because we had a couple kids, a couple kids that stayed for five years and did a couple degrees that really made our program, Cameo McCurley, Mariah Van Toff, some of those kids that stayed with the program. And they're a piece of the puzzle. Now, that 24-0 team, special. They worked hard. If you think about that team, we had a fifth year and we had a bunch of first, second years. So when I look back now, like, that team was super talented, but we were very young.

And we just, we kept winning, and we were good. we hosted the conference championships that year in Lloydminster, which you would think is like a big advantage. We won our quarterfinal game fairly easily. Semi-final game, really tight game. I would say our kids were really nervous because Lakeland was packed, and I think Ken even talked about this at Lakeland, when it's packed, the noise just echoes in there.

It's crazy loud. Yeah, it just echoes, and Austin's expiry that on the women's side. But it got really loud. I felt we're a little bit tight. end of the day we're down one with like eight seconds left one of our best players goes to the hoop misses the layup fouls to get the ball back so it should have been just the two shots

the ref called an intentional foul so they got two shots in the ball I came on so there's like six seconds left at this point I come unglued I got tossed out of the gym it was a whole deal because the game was essentially over because they went up three and they got the ball and then they get the ball right so we ended up losing by five I think it ended after the foul

all shots but it's just one of those things that you don't realize how close you are until it happens so we lose the semifinals and then i'll be honest the bronze medal game we were awful like we got our butts kicked so we played left bridge college in the bronze medal game they were 24 and o in the south we were 24 and oh really they lost by two points to nate as well um so we played each other on the backside so one of those things though neither of us had really experienced a tough game like I think our closest game, if you went through the box scores, was probably 12 points that year. Like it wasn't really that close.

So I feel like I failed that it didn't get us to fail. We probably should have played university teams. I probably should have coached differently to put us in some bad situations to figure out, okay, do we have the grit to get out of this? And it's one of those things every year as a coach. You look at it and say, I wish in 0809, I knew what I knew now.

so that I could coach those kids differently. That could have been so much better, right? So every year when you look back, you're like, oh, I wish I knew. And the only way you get that is by experience. Yeah, by doing. Yeah, 100%. The experience. And for me and just like you said, like when you want to get better something,

my offseason is spent like a lot of other coaches, is reading and talking to other coaches, going to different camps, and getting other ideas, like, what can I change? How can I be better? How can we make this? So that was a tough loss for that 24 and O team. I will say, and this will get me in trouble for sure. This team's more talented than that team.

You're going to have, you're getting eight phone calls on Wednesday. I'm not saying they're better right now. I'm saying they're more talented. They're starting to figure out how to play together. We've been missing one of our key players all year, so that's kind of an underlying positive for us. But yeah, it was a ton of fun with that group. You know, they had a ton of fun.

And the nice thing is when you win a lot of games, those kids now, whenever I see them, they're still tight. They still remember that. They remember the loss, obviously. But that was a special year to go in and kick the crap out of everyone all year. How special is it to get coach of the year? I think that's really, it's nice to be awarded by your peers because the coaches vote on that. But ultimately, I always tell the girls that's me winning coach of the year about you.

guys. It's because you guys play good. It's not because I came up with like an unreal game planner coached awesome practices. It's about the girls performing, right? So when you look at the Coach of the Year awards, that's strictly because of the players. So I'm thankful for the players. I'm thankful that the coaches voted for me. That's great. It's a feathering your cap. But at the end of the day, it's not what I want. I don't want that. I want the ACAC championship and the CCAA championship. So I'll trade any individual award for those two banners. Couldn't say that better. But still, when I got looking at your stats to give you a feather in your hand, I was like, you very quietly, or I just don't pay close enough attention.

Could be a little of both, I would bet. But what do you get? You got North Coach of the Year three different years, and you got ACAC Coach of the Year twice, and you were nominated twice for the CCAA, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, the Canadian Coach of the Year, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Like, that's pretty cool. Yeah, and it's fantastic. And I will say besides the players, a lot of it has to do with the support that Lake Lans put in place around athletics, which has been a huge jump when things change from that 6 and 14 year. Well, our funding model changed too. And that's a big key. If you look at mine and Austin's programs, especially, when we started getting a little more funding to bring kids in here, that helped their programs a lot. I got to ask.

I follow you on Instagram. Right. And all summer, you coach liner's ball. This summary, yeah. You bet. Where did you come up with the McElmore jacket and the golden bull hat? Yeah. So I wanted to do something fun for the girls.

And Donnie Atkinson, as you know, I played senior with him forever for a fastball. And so he's like, well, Kinger, what do you think? I said, well, let's get a hat or let's get a jacket from Valley Village or something, was the original idea. Was Donnie helping coach? Donnie was the head coach. I was his assistant. It was his first year head coaching. So he twisted my arm.

I probably owe him like five or six favors, to be honest. So I scratched one off this summer. And our first tournament of the year was in Seattle. So me and him went to Value Village, hence the McElmore, the Malcamore videos. And we got that jacket. And then the Golden Bull, our other assistant coach. Yeah, Dean Dorchuk. His daughter was on the team.

He's obsessed with the Rock. So we went with the Rock. So Golden Bowl was the Play. player of the game. The Maclemore was someone that missed a base, missed signs, did something dumb, Ayl Lecann, you name, just whatever. So the girls really took to it. It was a lot of fun. And it was really cool that, like, as soon as I'm like, what? So for the people who were like, what are they talking about? It was a purple. Was a purple, like, suit jacket, basically? Suit jacket, I guess, right? And then, so you see these two girls getting player of the game,

and one of them was wearing a purple suit jacket, and the other one's got Brahma Bull. the gold the rock bowl on a black hat right that was sweet yeah and you know what a lot of people have trouble with my instagram because of when i'm not coaching basketball i usually end up coaching something like softball this summer triple a baseball a couple summers ago so people are like what what are you doing i thought you coach basketball but i do think it's an important balance um same thing as like playing lunch hockey i think that's important to like stay grounded because you and i grew up the same you played everything and you did everything and that's a good way to meet a ton of people.

Meet a ton of people. I think what you do with the Macamore and the Brahma Bowl, the Golden, the Golden Bowl. I think that right there is a simple way to really tighten the team together, right? Just like a little, like that's super simple. Yeah. And you know what? It's funny even at, because those girls are 15, 16, they're talking about it.

Like during the game, they're talking about who's going to get it. I don't want to wear it. I don't want to have to wear it. And like, yeah, it became like a thing that they bond around. And you see a lot of teams doing stuff. our men's volleyball team has, they ordered a WWE belt for player of practice. So they wear this belt around all the time. So I think things like that really help your culture.

And I think it's important. And as you know, a lot of the off ice off field stuff goes a long way to the on-field production. Absolutely. Commerodery, right? Yeah. Like, you realize with like WWE championship belts, you can get them like customized to say whatever you want now. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I saw their belt.

Like it's unbelievable. And you can spend an ungodly amount and have like, it almost plated in gold. Heck, you probably have a plighted in gold. Yeah, it's amazing what you can buy now online or get custom ordered from anywhere. So I think one of the things we used a hard hat one year because we want her hardest worker. That's pretty corny, right? No, pretty commonplace, corny, sure, whatever you want. Yeah, I definitely want to get something for our girls.

I'm just waiting to find the right thing. I think I need like a really big green robe or something. U of A's got like a white suit outfit that they use for the pandas, and I'm like, ah, that's pretty sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we don't have anything on the basketball side, but if I end up coaching fastball again, I think something like that will definitely come up

because the kids loved it. Well, we, uh, the hitman, um, showed up to Joe Miaska. He had a hard hat, hard hat for the player of the game, but he had it painted up professionally. Oh, wow. You got a picture of it? I got a picture.

of last night, I got Scotty and Noda flexing way too hard, so shout out to Scotty, he'll probably listen to this at some point. That is awesome. That is awesome. So any game we win, we... It looks like he just pounded out a couple reps, or is he... That's right before? That's right.

Actually, we beat Wayne Rite last night. 6'5, we had no business winning that hockey game. Huge game. And Scottie got out... Well, we got out shot in the second. I don't know what it was. It was bad. Like, call it 20-3 bad. And we came out of it, and we're only down four three. Right?

Like, he still. Yeah, he held you in. Yeah. So the reason he looks probably jacked is because he lost 10 pounds in the game. Hey, goalie's got to do that, right? Goaltending wins games. Yes. Highly underrated in any level of hockey.

Well, it's the cornerstone of any hockey team, right? You don't have good goaltending, you're not winning anything. Yeah. We don't have to get down the oilers last year, rent or anything. Yeah, but you know what? Cal Tap was in here last week. I know. I heard him.

I think they got the same goaltender. So he just... I think they're slightly better... I don't even want to get down... But they're slightly better defensively, right? They're doing a little bit better job coming back on defense. I know he went on a hardcore McDavid rant.

Holy moly. And you know what? I used to be on a group chat with Tap at one point and the McDavid oiler text. I had to leave the group chat because there's just so many McDavid texts. What do you think about... We kind of talked about it off here.

What do you think of his... Well, I think we're calling it the Superman Challenge right now. The Superman Challenge. Yeah. He told me to listen in because he's like, hey, I mentioned you. So I assumed it was something to do with coaching. So when I heard the Superman challenge, you know what?

And it's a great idea. And as we're talking, as we sat down, it's unreal how many guys can do multiple sports. And I think that that is a credit to small town. Like in this area, a lot of guys are just natural. You grow up playing everything. You play everything. Because if you don't, there's no team. Yeah, whatever's, yeah, exactly.

Whatever's in season. Everyone has to play it. So I like the idea. A lot of it's going to be hard to gauge. Like I said, tap. No, no, we've been talking about this. I think the long you think about it, you can't have, like, the hardest shot on hockey or something, right?

Like, that just doesn't translate across. But you could do an individual Olympic sports. I don't mind that. I'm not doing a lose or anything. I'm telling you that right now. I'm not that crazy. All right, but I'm... You know what it's got to be is like a heptathlon type of deal.

So you're talking, what's hept? Is that five? I think so. No, pentathlon. Penn's five? Seven? Seven? I didn't mind his idea with 12.

I just, that's a lot of, and I don't know if there's 12. Well, there probably is who we can't. Off the top of my head, we were talking about this. You got golf in the summer. You can easily do one weekend where you golf and that's an individual sport. Ping pong's another one. That takes one day, big old tournament. Set one of those up in college, it was unreal.

I like a ton of fun. Sounds like a fun reason right there. Sure, sure. Yeah, I'll, uh, I'll, I'll swing a paddle, and then I'll get beat first round and I'll be mad. Tennis is another one. I suck at tennis. Yeah, I love tennis, yep.

But, I mean, tennis is, there's three right there. Yeah, those are great ones. And if we want to take out a little aggression, we could probably put on the big mitts and have a little boxing match. Oh, yep. I think he mentioned I would be out on the boxing. No, probably couldn't have boxing. I'll be the judge.

Bowling, he mentioned. Yeah, bowling, okay, there's four. And you mentioned earlier curling. That is a fine skill. The thing with curling is anyone that's done a little bit of it is probably like really good compared to the rest of us by the time we figured it out, right? Yeah, but if you gave them enough time, so now you can go and you can... Well, are we classifying it cheating if you practice, like leading up to all this stuff?

No, I don't think so. Oh, I see that when he talked about it, he said, basically we, if you had 12 events, one each different month, you could practice, you could do whatever you wanted to, Yeah. Because one of the other ones he had was swimming. Oh, my goodness. Once again, I might take an X on the swimming. That's a tough one.

Then you're not the Superman. I definitely am not. We don't have to make it like this. It could be one as fast as you could go. You know what? They should be a couple. If you're going to do 12, you get two vetoes. You just get vetoed on those ones.

Ooh. Or you get, okay, you could get two v. I don't mind that. Because now you can just go listen to that doesn't mind. And so you're basically taking your two worst scores off the final total. Yeah. It's like an official Olympic sport, right? You're knocking out the bad judge.

You're taking out the two bad scores and keeping your aggregator, whatever they call it. No, I like the idea. And you know, all the names he named, obviously mostly hockey guys. Well, yeah, because everyone in Canada plays hockey as we talked about. That's right. Like, I wouldn't say everyone's a hockey guy, but they all play hockey. You know, it would be fun as if we could get a Red Bull crashed ice circuit. Oh, my God.

I do. I had a lady who did Red Bull crashed ice. she's married to one of my buddies. I interviewed her back on, I can't even remember what episode that was. It was the summer. Did she love it? Oh, loved it.

Oh, my gosh. You imagine how fun that'd be? Oh, it'd be a ton of fun. Somehow line up when it comes to, because it comes to Amiton, doesn't it? It used to come to Emmetton. I don't know if it's still that big on the circuit. I don't know.

I don't know. I can find out. Sweet talk our way into having 30 of us go down that thing. Could you imagine that? Oh, that would be unreal. Yeah. I would be interested. But, yeah, what a great idea that he,

thought up of there because yeah there's a ton of guys that can do a ton of things ton of things let's talk about this golden ticket sports that just came sure maybe you want to give the listener a little background because if I hadn't bumped any of the pool here a week ago at children's swim class I would have not dug a little deeper into it so yeah you might as well uh give you a little feel about what what you're up to yeah the promotional um yeah so basically long story short myself and tanner brightman a guy out of regina i coach provincial team with. We'd been putting on, he organized it, a clinic out in Regina called the Best in the West

Coaches Clinic. And he had 17 people the first year. I spoke at it. A couple other guys spoke at it. The second year, it got to like 70 some people, so it started to grow a little. Yeah. And then last year, we decided to make a business out of it because we're starting to make some connections, as you know, the connection world.

When you meet good people and work with good people, you just want to work with them more. and we met a lot of good people. We had in a great class this year for our coaching clinic, and we had 134 people in Regina, so the growth has been phenomenal. From there, you know, us launching our brand is kind of springboarded. We're running Coaches Clinic in Alberta in April. We're looking at one in September in Vancouver. We're looking at one with Toronto with Basketball Canada.

We have a conference this week with Basketball Canada, to shore up some things. And then a couple MBA coaches that we're working with in helping facilitate their stuff. So we kind of went from just coaching clinics to running coaching clinics and player clinics and then facilitating for some of these professional coaches. And obviously this last clinic,

we brought over a couple guys from Europe that are really popular right now, like 180,000 followers on Instagram, two of the bigger skill guys in Europe, and they came over and they're just salt of the earth guys, great to work with. And then from there, we've kind of expanded our network. So we're really chasing down,

that coaching model, because one of the things we found is living in Canada being basketball coaches, there's not a lot of PD accessible. You have to go to Vegas or you've got to go to Florida, so you're paying for your flights and your hotels, and the coaches there are going to come in and speak for an hour, and it might be useful and might not, but the thing that we found is getting the right people, they're really open to sharing, and they're sharing all their ideas, which is what you want when you go to a coaching clinic, because some coaches, you know, they keep their really good stuff here and they'll just share a little bit.

And we've been able to be very lucky with coaches that are opening the door and saying, this is what I do. This is my thoughts. So, yeah, really exciting for us. Obviously, just in the startup phase, we said we're going to do three events a year. I think right now we're looking at eight or nine next year. So that's kind of blown up a little bit. Yeah, so that's on the side of coaching.

Thank goodness that's working around our college season. So, yeah. So it's become quickly. what looks like or sounds like a pretty big success then yeah we're we're really excited about it and when we got into it our biggest thing is we don't care if we make money we want to meet good people we want to learn the game and we want to be able to travel and learn from as many places as possible and it's just worked out that um with tanner's connections with his provincial teams hosting nationals and stuff in mind through the college coaches um it's been a great kind of double network that a lot of

people have known us so we have a good reputation to start and then it's kind of branched out from there so we're getting a lot of second and third hand word of mouth and our clinic in april is going to be pretty big we have kevin eastman coming from the clippers and the celtics formally so one of the bigger NBA coaches and that's really cool yeah so it's it's nice that we're getting those connections with these people and a lot of them you wouldn't know it but phenomenal to work with right like they're really easy to work with really easy to share with and get them up into Regina or Calgary or Vancouver. Anytime you can go sit down at a conference

and even if the entire thing isn't the greatest day, not saying that yours won't be, but even if it isn't, if you can pull out one, like one idea, it's well worth it. Well, that's what I say when I speak. I said, listen, you're not going to love everything I say, but if you can take one thing for me, great. So in that clinic that we had in Regina,

those coaches were so good. Like, we're running it, and I got two notepads full of notes, and I'm going back through, you know, all the videotape making more notes because it was so helpful. So, yeah, we're really excited about where it's going, and we're running in all-girls clinic here. First one in Saskatchewan on January 4th and 5th, so we have 150 athletes, top athletes from across the province coming to that.

So we're very excited. All female coaches, female photographer, like top to bottom, Female brand sponsoring it. So it's, yeah, it just seems like it's one event after another. And kind of like you getting into this, it just all of a sudden it's picking up steam.

And it's exciting because it's something we love, right? We love talking about coaching. We love talking to coaches. And even us talking at the pool, right? Like that conversation could have end up being two hours if we didn't have to get our kids out of there. Out of swimming lessons. Thank God.

I wasn't in the pool that day. You know, when I listen to you, I always go like, you remind me of Ken Rutherford a bit, meaning that you're going to be an extremely busy guy. Like, do you ever slow down? That's interesting. That's where my wife will say no. She'll say I'm not home very much.

There's something about being busy, and that being said, when I run into Ken at school, we get sidetracked every single time for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and it's always throwing coaching ideas. Yeah, I like to stay busy. I like to do a lot of things. And like you said, coaching fastball this summer or AAA baseball, I really enjoy stepping outside just the basketball coaching because I really think it helps me be a better basketball coach.

So coaching softball this summer, coaching younger kids, it's a great experience for me. I had to be an assistant coach. I'm a little bit of a control freak. So that was a tough experience. I'm not used to dealing with parents at all, at all. usually if a parent tries to talk to me about their kid it's no your kids and adults don't ever talk to me again about that right in college um and and when i coached hockey in australia that's that's a new experience i shared an office last couple years with our soccer coach

and i found that to be really helpful because we started taking ideas from each other's practices and translating them into our own right for me advantage disadvantage stuff he would take and i would take his transition drills and figure out how to morph them. So I like to be busy. I think my wife would like me to slow down a little bit, but life's short, right? You only get so much time to do stuff. And as the kids get older, I know I'm going to be limited in time because our kids are the same age.

So right now I can get away with sneaking out on the weekends and at nights, but I think soon it'll be chasing kids to tournaments and practices. And you know what's coming down the pipe, right? But I do think you got to make the best of what you can while you can. I think that's important. always think man i waste a lot of time in my 20s telling myself i was busy isn't it incredible here's the thing about people that are busy they're not usually telling you they're busy they're just busy they're just busy because i always laugh when people like i'm so busy i'm so busy right now

like i just don't even know and somebody somewhere is going oh i hope i didn't say that but yeah everyone says it at some point everybody says it at some point i say it at some point sometimes it's just tired and grumpy i'm just like i'm busy yeah so you know But you hit it on the head, right? The people who are busy, they don't have time to sit and tell people that are busy. They're just out doing things. And that's probably why when I run into Ken,

our conversation will start at my office. They'll end up walking into the change room, into the wait room, to the water fountain, and then the conversations. I might not see them for two weeks, and then we pick up a different conversation. We end up reading a lot of the same books, so we end up throwing ideas at each other.

What's one of the books you're reading right now? The last one that I really like Grid Iron Genius by Mike Lombardi about how Belichick runs his NFL stuff. Actually, Tapp was, I don't know if Tapp was hitting on it, but he's a big Belichick guy. Yes, he is. Yeah. So that's one of the big ones. And then the one that I just ordered is the Barcelona way, how Barcelona FC built up their soccer program through their youth programs. Right.

And how they've changed that. So I'm really interested to see how that goes. So I read kind of anything related to coaching, anything I think I can. find something to but it ends up when ken and i cross pass he'll talk about a book and it's like oh yeah i just read that book so it ends up those type of conversation so pretty linear focus i don't my reading if you look in my library it's there's not a lot of non-sports books unfortunately whereas my wife's everything but sports which is interesting because she was a much better athlete than me but doesn't like to read the the sports books so i think it works out well for us sometimes

I'm reading Ron McLean's book right now. And I'm having a really tough time getting through it. Because I just finished reading Brian Kilray's book. And before that Bob Probert's book. Right. Which are... Proberts is really good, I heard. Proverbs is really good.

But you sit there and you go, man, you're a meathead. Like, I mean, God, that's so... He passed away. But, like, he had all the talent in the world, and he pissed it away on drugs and alcohol. Like, I mean, over. and over and over and over again. And it's just like me sitting here, I'm just like, yeah, an idiot.

Like, why am I even reading this? Right? Like, I'm reading about a guy who, as talent as he was and as good a career as he was, you know, did some unbelievably dumb things. And just because he was successful got to keep doing the dumb things. That's essentially what I took from the book. Yeah. Right?

And then I read Brian Kilray's book, which was fantastic. Most winningest coach in all of Canadian junior hockey. And it was fantastic. But, you know, I got written down here that we should, I wanted to touch on Sutter, Daryl Sutter to the comments, came out about his coaching, and then Peters, him getting let go or stepping down, right? And when you read the old stories, and there's some,

like, you just got to read it. You just got to pick a book and read it. And see where the games come from, right? Yeah. But, uh, reading Ron McLean's, I was just going to say you're talking all sports. I mean Ron's and I, like, it's super interesting because it's him and Don Cherry and like how he got into it and how his career progressed. But it's almost like, it's almost kind of the idea I've had with the podcast, right? Right. I'd hate to just do hockey player after hockey player after hockey player after hockey player.

Oh, you started out there. Okay. Yeah. And you went here. Oh, great. Yeah. Because it just gets so like, I'm honest. And I guess obviously where I'm going with this is you're. doing coaching books, sports books, but it isn't specifically just a basketball coach after basketball, because you just said Belichick, right? That's a football guy who has been arguably the most successful coach ever.

Yeah. And I think it's important because I think if you're just in your own little bubble all the time, you're not getting better. And as I said, you need ideas from everywhere. Wow. And Belichick, obviously, is the greatest of what he does there. But, and Tape alluded to this, stuff that he does in terms of culture and what's acceptable,

what's not, it's across the board. Yeah. Like it doesn't matter. And coaching's coaching. I think different sports you said, like you talked about the hockey culture. I think it's changing a lot. But what used to be acceptable, let's be honest, like 80, 90%, even think of the things that happened when we grew up playing hockey.

Like, if anyone found out about that, like coaches are fired, like the hazing stuff that happened when I grew up, like, it's unbelievable to think about that. So it does seem like it's being cleaned up. in this new era of coaches coming through, I think is a lot more in tune with the start athletes. I think the other thing that's happening in hockey right now is they're starting to catch up to NBA and baseball a little bit where the league is realizing the athletes, the product, right? It's about the athletes. So the athletes are getting more of a voice, right? And you saw that a little in the Mariner thing. Because even if that happened with the Babcock stuff, like if it

happened before, no one's saying anything about it, right? No one's saying anything. And that's not getting out to media. I don't think. Do you? I've had coaches ask me to compare myself to other players and rate the players for sure. That seems like a pretty small thing. But now with player entitlement, it's a bigger and bigger piece, right? It's crazy to me in today's world. I don't know how I can say this politically correct right now. Probably not going to. Probably can't. The Peters thing, right, I think anyone in their daughter,

can agree the N-word has no place right 100% yep it is a little bit crazy in me the guy can get canned for something he did 10 years ago that is it like you you put that across the board on anyone nobody's perfect I have yet to meet a perfect person now and we're sure okay yeah but I mean I just I think everybody in Alberta just jumps to while our prime minister he's done some pretty shady stuff right right like I think as a coach a guy who's been coaching now 12 years. In your 12 year span, I have to assume at some point you've probably done something where you're like, ah, crap.

Like, are you ever worried when you see all the stuff coming out about the hockey coaches right now? Yeah. Have you ever thought, like, man, like, that is crazy? Or you're like, no, like, we run a tight ship and it's not a bother whatsoever? So I'm coaching females, I think you've got to be really careful. I think there's got to be, like, I think it would be worse if I coached males because I would say typically male coaching male is a little more abusive in terms of like tone and

language and language yeah um with female it's just like there's areas that you're not touching on you can't say there's words you can't say now i'm never really concerned about it but i can tell you from administration in our conference in canada wide Canada sport i think they put out I think and you might have to fact check me there's something like 73 reported coach player abuse um last year and there's 150 more that we're going through documentation in sport Canada. So what's going to eventually happen and what we've been told at the college level is eventually if you're my player, you and I can't meet in a room by ourselves, even with the door open, even with the window, it's got to be two coaches.

I can't pick you up from the airport. It's going to have to be two coaches. It's going to have to be multiple people all the time, which I think is absolutely ridiculous because I'm pretty confident on how I run my program that nothing. inappropriate is happening, but also just think about that for me at the college level. Okay, if that's going to happen, you're going to have to hire me a full-time assistant to be there all the time. If that's happening at youth soccer, six, seven-year-old soccer, you didn't have to have two coaches there to talk to a kid at all the time. Like, it just, what's happening is

going so far, the needle's going so far the other way, right? I do think there's going to be an evening out period. I think we were so far to the right. I think now it's coming so far to the left. I think it's going to even out. Now, I'm not saying that all the coach abuse stuff hasn't happened because it clearly is happening. It's clearly happening, right? Yeah. But it's just how far does it go? Because if that's the case, if you're telling me I'm a full-time coach and you want to talk to me

and I have to refuse having a player meeting with you, let's just say your dog died or something and I can't talk to you about it because we can't be in a room together, that's probably when I'm going to leave coaching, to be honest. Like, that's, the relationship piece, the human piece is a big part of coaching and a big part of anyone, right? And if you can't have that relationship with your players, how are you going to coach them is my thing? Because you have to have their respect to coach them hard, I think. Right? And you have to have some common ground.

Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. I don't know. It's weird, and especially males coaching females. Like, it's just, that's the biggest one, right? Like at any point someone could say something and you would be in trouble at any point. Now I'm thankful I've had no issues at all, nor am I going to. But if sport Canada says you have to have two coaches all the time talking to players,

and that's what's going to have to happen. It's not great. Because, yeah, 10 years ago, could you imagine if someone came up to me and said, hey, remember in 2009-10, you said, this. There's no, there's no way I can remember. Like, do you think he remembers that? Probably, because it was obviously dealt with, but there's probably other smaller incidents that have happened. I'm guaranteed. The coaches have no idea. Don't even remember, right? Players don't even remember.

So that's the tough thing about that if it's not in the action. Yeah. I always, I always look at the locker room as like a sanctuary, right? Should be. It should be a sacred place, right? Now, given if a coach or players for that matter, right, doesn't have to be just a coach. You can do silly over-the-top things that are punishable, right? Right. But usually that's supposed to be taken care of by the team, right?

I would say a good team, yeah. Or a good team. Yeah, it probably comes back. Because you talked to that culture piece, right? The same thing with the issue we talked about before. if you have a good culture, I think players know it's not acceptable, right? And that's one of the lucky things I have right now is I have a couple leaders that are good. And I know that we've had issues this year, but it hasn't got to me because they've squashed it.

Which is the way it should be. I don't need to hear about everything that happens. You guys figure it out. You have the team rules. You know what they are. You guys enforce them and then everything's all good. Yeah, you entered a slippery slope for sure with that question because it is tough to see because, you know, there's a part of me that what he said absolutely no way you should be fired but there's a part of me

that's like that's 10 years ago yeah oh yeah yeah so like we all like if i said something like that i fully expect to be fired yeah let's let's be honest like you should fire me and i would walk out the door right but if you're coming back at me for something i said in 0809 that's tough i'm i'll have a tough time with that that's real tough time with that yeah so it's not a it's not a great unfortunately with what's happened with the power struggle and even go back to like Kennedy right like back in those days it was still happening now so what uh before we get in the final five I don't know how long we've been going for over hour and a half anyways um what is next for you like are you plant like you I know you've mentioned you want to win obviously that is at the

top of anyone yeah who's in competitive sports they want to win yep so obviously that's at the top your dream list. Yes. What is the, like is it CIS? Is it the WNBA? No, I think that's impossible. You think that's impossible? Yeah, I do, I do.

You know what? Very interesting, because when I first started coaching, I was, my goal is I'm going to be in the CS. I want to coach CS. That's my goal. That's about as high as you can go in Canada, really. The last few years now that I've had success and now that this program has really become mine, I feel like it's my program. Yeah, you've built it. I think I would have a hard time leaving.

Now, with that being said, I can say openly the last three years that I'm getting phone calls about leaving. So it's not like I'm making phone calls, but people are... Inquiring. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, and this summer I was, had a few conversations. about jumping over to the men's side in a CIS program, something that I hadn't really considered, to be honest.

I love my job, I love what I do, I love these kids, I'm super loyal to them, especially, you know, like Pipes and Dugan, the kids that I flew over to Australian recruit, the kids that you've seen play since 16 years old, I don't think there's ever a right time to leave. But there's definitely opportunities there. I don't know where I'm headed. At one point I thought I was just headed to that path. Right now, if you told me, Chris, you're going to coach Lakeland for the next 14 years, I'd be like, yeah, you're right.

That sounds great. Like, I love my job. I love being here. I love the fact that I'm raising my kids in the area that I grew up in, that their grandparents get to see them all the time. That's phenomenal. Yeah. It's phenomenal. And I think that is a high value for me and my life factor.

And it allows me to do lots of things that I can do because family's here. When you move to the next level, you move to a different state. you don't have all those things that you have here. You don't know everyone. You can't get favors from people. You can't get babysitters from people, right? So where I'm going, I just kind of ran you around a circle. I don't know where I'm going to end up, but I've definitely,

there's been more talks, let's put it that way. And there's been more talks about switching over, which coaching males and females is two totally different beasts in my opinion. Yeah. I'm just interested to see, you know, you're a very successful coach. And if you go, I'm going to stick in here in Lakeland. That's cool. Yeah.

I just didn't know if you wanted to be the next rock star coach of the WMBA winning 20 championships. I think when I was young, that was like an ego thing for me. Like, I think my ego really wanted that CIS notch to say I was there. I think the older I've got, there's good coaches everywhere. There's good coaches in high school and junior high. Like, you know when you see a guy coach basketball if he's a good coach, like I know. and your reputation means a lot. My reputation means a lot.

I don't need that to tell myself I'm a good coach. I don't need to say, hey, I coach CIS to say I'm a good coach. Reality is, you could go CIS and be terrible. And then you've got the painted brush, failed CIS coach. You can't get a job, right? I just, when I look at you, I go, I look at the work. You can see it in the years. I can see the work that's gone into building a program.

And now you have a program that has a name for itself. And that would be, well, one of my questions is one of the final five is exactly around that. I call it an organization. If you could go be a part of an organization, which would you go? And the idea is the program. What program attracts you the most, right? And that's going to be one of your final five. And what you've done in Lloyd is you've created a program that people want to be a part of.

And that takes time. You don't build a program overnight or maybe you do. I can't think of any. I don't. I don't think you build it properly. I think you could build a one-off. You can't build sustainability. And I think that's the thing that I've took pride in since that first playoff birth,

we haven't missed playoffs. We haven't had a losing record. And that's something that I take pride in. And eventually we're going to have some down years that's going to happen. But I'll tell you what, I'm going to work my butt off to make sure it doesn't happen. Because me like you, I don't like losing very much. Not at all. All right, well, let's get to the final five.

Brought to you by Crude Master Transport. Shout out to Heath and Tracy McDonald. They're proud supporters of the podcast. And I appreciate them helping me out. So here's your first one. If you could pit... Are you switching it up? You're switching it up?

Well, no, I put the starting lineup, who would you pick? So I was thinking of you as a play. back in your playing days if you could pick okay so you could pick a starting lineup who would you want as your five walking on the court for you NBA well yeah anybody yeah current past doesn't matter yeah so number one is Steve Nash I think he's the ultimate leader ultimate teammate ultimate human to be honest um name my kid after him obviously um he would be number one uh I think you need a killer everyone needs a killer so Jordan would be number two I can't believe

I can't believe Jordan's number two to Nash Oh yeah, not even close Like it's not even close It's not even close And I will say full discretion And my love of basketball players It's Nash Kobe Jordan But I would take Jordan over Kobe

I'm trying to think here I'd probably want Larry Bird Because that guy just wins He sells out Even though he'd be a liability defensively I would want See if I'm making a team Now this team is

Super Guard heavy You're making the dream team Yeah I would say I would love to have like a guy like Barclay competitor I think you'd also keep it loose and fun Obviously Barclay didn't win But that guy competed like heck

And either Kevin Drant or Magic Johnson Those will be the other two Kevin Dran's just unbelievable to watch At like 7 feet doing what he does but when you when you watch so much hoops like you could i could pick like three lineups for you right that's fair enough but you see nash jordan bird barkley yeah and probably drant her magic and drant yeah i'm not saying it would work but those would be the guys that i don't want to watch play i don't know man that sounds lovely to me yeah tim duncan would be right behind as well

because great leader how how much did you enjoy watching uh i always got ask guys who are the favorite NHL team is. I've never had a basketball guy. I assume you have a favorite NBA team. I assume it's the Toronto Raptors, but maybe I'm wrong. You're wrong. So, I'm wrong. Who is it? Yeah, I'm going to give you the back story on it. Unfortunately for you, you're going to have to listen to it.

So when I started watching basketball, WGN, small town cable, I could watch the Bulls after school all the time. I finally got old enough to move downstairs in the basement, so I got a TV in my room. So, I think I usually went to bed at like 9 o'clock or 8.000.

30 or something like that. I went to sleep really early. Lakers games came on at 830 or 9 all the time, and that was the Kobe Shack era. So I would turn the volume down. I became a Lakers fan watching those guys play. So Lakers is my number one. Full disclosure, I can't cheer for them with LeBron. I hate LeBron. I can't stand LeBron. So I'm kind of off the Lakers bandwagon.

Number two is the Spurs. And I think you talk about the organizational in here. We'll talk about that, but it's just what they've done as an organization is unbelievable. capable with Popovich. But yeah, Lakers and Spurs. I do love the Raptors, but I will, full disclosure, not a hardcore Raptors fan. I was really pumped about the run last year.

It was exciting to see. It was great for Canada, great for basketball. But, yeah, I would still be a Lakers guy over them, which is awful to say because the Lakers have so many fans everywhere. They're the number one market. Yeah. Kobe and Shaq, that was it for me. Black Mamba.

Yeah. And disputes, they play together. love each other, hate each other. Kobe Brian could just put the ball in for more, ever he wanted. Yeah, and he just, he wanted to win. And Phil Jackson was so good at managing, at both Phil's last two books.

And it's interesting him talking about basically the last run, the last repeat was like just handling the egos, like trying to keep everyone's ego in check, which is that's a part of coaching, right? So moves me on to question two, which is two parts, which I learned this from Kyle Tap. So we'll start up with the first.

part. If you could go and sit and have coffee with one person, just to sit and have, or... It'd have to be a beer for me. A chill beer. Yeah. All right. A chilled beer with any person. Who would it be? Yeah. Popovich would be mine.

Popovich. Yeah. Sit and pick his breath. Yeah. I just, if you started out in junior college and ends up being probably the best coach in NBA history, right? And I think he does such a great job of culture and X's and O's and making guys play for each other and play together. Yeah, I really appreciate his style in any documentaries I've watched or read on him. Yeah, he'd be my number one for sure. Now, if you could have several beers, several beers,

can't even spit it up, several beers and go out for a night of party, and who would it be? Yeah, well, it's got to be either Shaq or Charles Barkley. Those will be the two for me. Shack would be a lot of them. Yeah, it would be one of those two. Shack, I'd be afraid he'd kill me or something but yeah shack or charles for me would be that i think if i could put them together i think that would be an unbelievable evening so yeah those would be my two multiple beers those are the guys they'd be a lot of fun yeah well this leads me to exactly where i know we're heading but if you could be a part of one organization it is the spursa yeah i think was it look at like the last 17 years it's incredible what they've done that organization and every time you kind of think they're done

they bounce back. Good drafting, good culture, guys that don't fit in, they get rid of right away, their standards are high. I just love the way it's round. Very similar to the Patriots. The Patriots make me sick,

but I love what they do. Like, I'm a Steelers fan, so I hate the Patriots. But I love... What did you think of the helmet hitting? Oh my God. It was ridiculous. It was absolutely ridiculous.

The best part of all of it all, is Rudolph gets hit with the helmet. I know. And then he's going, come on. Instead, like, if I get, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this, but I feel like 95% of people, they get hit with the helmet, they're trying to grab the helmet back and swap that guy. But instead he throws up his arms going, what the heck? And then he gets run over. And when he gets run over. Oh, yeah, they hit from behind, basically. Yeah, the two minutes for boarding. Well, here's the, yeah, so he gets smoked there. And then you look at him and I think any

sane guy realizes like how big is he like 6, 4, 290, 30? Like you're going after a map like I think you probably thought okay maybe this is a hold me back fight, a classic basketball fight right? Everyone's getting held back but no one's actually

doing anything right? I think that's kind of what was happening there. Yeah that was it was interesting. It's been it's been a rough go watching the Steelers. They pulled it out today but yeah it's not great. But the Patriots are right behind the spurs, in my opinion. Those are the two organizations that you're just in

top to bottom what they do. I think that's why reading Michael Lombardi is someone that worked with Belichick for so long, even in Cleveland, saying that that's who he was in Cleveland. It just didn't work out. That he stuck with what he does, I think. Yeah, very interesting stuff. I meant to ask

this earlier on, because I always ask it of hockey guys, do you remember, well, no, not do you remember, what is your favorite gym to go into? Now, I mean, that could change from player to coach. But is there a gym out there that you're just like, man, if you're ever in this town,

you make sure you check out their gym or their games because it's unreal atmosphere or what have you? Yeah, so U of L when I was there the first year, we had the old gym, the dungeon. So it was built obviously down low in the university. The crowd, like I said, probably 50, 60% crazy Mormons, just going nuts to put it in perspective. of we play UFC Friday night there.

They have the Bekering brothers. They kick us. We lose by 50 points. We come home the next night with the crowd. We win by 30. We went 9 and 11 that year and we won one road game. We only won eight games at home. So that would be a gym.

It's still there. It's the rec gym now. They have a nice new facility. The other gym that I think is a fun place to play because it gets so loud just on the ACAC route is Augustana. Camrose. Yeah, just a little box. and it gets loud if hockey's not playing that night

the hockey players are there and they've had a few beers and they're nice and loud and it's always fun when you get chirped and people are mocking you I remember those days playing there guys pulling your shorts when you're throwing the ball in and stuff it's fun it's fun when guys are against you I think that's like the best part of sports

is people chirping you and rooting against you so those would be the two places for me that was the best gyms that I played in yeah what was the best game you ever had as a player best game I ever had. Actually, it's probably the year we lost in the conference finals at home against Mount Royal. It used to be best of three Mount Royal still in the league.

We beat them two games and none, but I think what happened was I was the guy left off the scouting report, like don't guard that guy. So I had two pretty big scoring games to help us win, which was awesome because I kind of took the role that my coach wanted me to be a defender and I wanted to play, so we kind of saw eye to eye on what I needed to do to play.

So those are two of my bigger scoring games, and I just remember those games because it was nice to be able to contribute in a way for a guy that averaged six points a game to be able to score 14 or 15. It's nice to be able to do that to help your team win, right? Even though it's not expected. Yeah. Yeah. If you had a time machine, question number four, where would you go?

Time machine. I've been watching a lot of the World War II in color right now, so that's probably up there. this is going to be a real biased sports answer. I would like to be in the dressing room on the golf course with Glevin Smolts and Maddox in that run of the 90s when those guys were all pitching together. And the Braves were really good.

I'm a big Braves fan. I would love to see what that culture of the Braves was like in the 90s when it sounded like those guys shared everything and enjoyed everything together and they're ultra competitors. I would love to see in the environment of those guys pitching and trying to one up each other in the 90s. I wouldn't have liked to see them lose all the time in playoffs, but I think that's where I'd like to go as a sports guy,

see how that team was and just be a fly on the wall during that span. They were good. They were so good, and they only got one. And they had the chant. Man, that shit. Yeah, it was, you talk about a cool atmosphere. It was cool watching the Braves in the playoffs again this year. Yeah.

I was pulling for them to go farther. Me too. Wheels fell off. A couple bad decisions, right? Yeah. Everyone always questions, coaches, and managers decisions, but a couple bad decisions, and then all of a sudden you can just feel it unraveling.

Slowly it unraveled. So, yeah, that would probably be it. Nothing like spectacular, but I would love to see what that was like on a sports perspective. Finally, if you could go to the final game of any sport. So game seven, if it went there, an NBA, hockey, baseball, et cetera, Super Bowl, whatever soccer championship you want, the National Dart Championship,

whatever you pick. What would you pick? Okay, so I got a tie. Is it a tie allowed? That's an easy one, actually. And somehow I forgot these from listening to Taps, what these questions were. World Series Game 7, not even close, I think, in my opinion. So how is it a tie?

It's not even close to the other game sevens. It's not like NBA, NHL, I think World Series is just a different feel. Yeah. Duke North Carolina conference game. I think that that is unbelievable. And I actually had a friend that I grew up with Ryan Williams. He's the Oilers Physio.

When they were down in Carolina, the trainers went to a Duke North Carolina game. So I'm super jealous because they sent me video of it. And I was pretty choked about it. But to see those two play each other in Cameron Stadium, I think would be absolutely unbelievable. That would be the, tie for World Series Game 7 for me.

You know, that's one I never actually throw out, but March Madness, as soon as you said Duke. Yeah. Like March Madness is a ton of fun of watch. Yeah. And I haven't been yet, and I've had a lot of buddies that go and they say it's unbelievable. The problem sometimes with the final March Madness is with the one-off format, sometimes you get a blowout in the final. Yeah. But like that Thursday, Friday, the first round of games and all the upsets, you don't even have

to be a basketball fan just watch the last three minutes all those games the crazy threes and the comebacks and just the entire game like the entire game from when they start is just fun it's a lot of fun yeah and the nice thing about watching that is you're watching 18 21 year olds they're going to make mistakes they're going to do yeah absolutely well actually uh they always talk about uh well college football and they always talk about frozen four hockey right and then it's the same way like they just go yeah Like there's no, like they're going. And there's going to be mistakes made, like you say, because of your young kids. But that's part of the fun of it.

Yeah. I would much rather see that than a flawless game. I'd like to see the big airs, you know. You think of flawless games, I think of the Olympics, the last time Canada. Canada won, right? Yeah. Sochi. Yeah.

2014, right? Vancouver was 2010. Yeah. So 2014, that final game, hey, and I'm happy about it. We won. Right. What was about as close to a perfect game or a flawless game as you can get. Like, Canadians did not make a mistake the entire bloody game and won, what was it, 2-0-0, I think?

Yeah. 3-0-0, I can't remember now. Was there an empty-nitter? I think there might have been an empty-netter. Yeah, and like you said, phenomenal to watch. Phenomenal watch. But, like, you go to a... Well, it's like watching the dream team and the, like, when Jordan and then were on the dream team at the Olympics.

phenomenal watch but they're beating everyone like there's so much better and now everything's evened out like Canada playing now you know going into the next Olympics if NHL guys I don't has they been cleared to play in the next one or not so the next Olympics is in China right right I believe in 2022 and everything I read on it is they're going to they want to be there because China's a giant market that they're trying to sell to and it's tons of dollars and so they're going to make it have it. So they'll be there. Yeah.

So I think the gap's closing. Do you not think the gap's closing on Canada with other countries? Oh, guarantee. Like it's not the same as it used to be where. I mean, we're still a favorite, but I mean, you lose to, well, Russia's always got absolute firepower out of the wazoo. Right. The Swedes are very, very good team.

And USA has come light years ahead. And that's not even talking about Finland, who they always play a soul. hard. Yeah. They play over their heads actually all the time. You just never know if you're going to win like a 2-1 game against them or they're going to beat you 2-1. Like that's what it always feels against the fans.

And somehow the Swiss does the same bloody thing to us. Usually Swiss has a goalie that stands on their head and does something crazy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. The hockey thing, yeah, it's getting tighter and tighter and tighter. Instead of there being like, I think it's been tight for a long time, but instead of there being like two top teams that you. get a watch for it's really moved in one that I just mentioned probably five yeah I agree let me ask you a

quick question on this the USA's improvement do you credit any of that to their developmental program that they've been running the last like eight nine years how they've changed that program I feel like you're leading me so you know the answer no I'm just I'm just wondering because it seems like they put a real emphasis on those kids playing together and keeping them in the US yeah like it seems like they're trying to make it a more I hate using the word holistic but like keeping those kids as a unit coming up through USA hockey whereas before it seemed like it was kind of a broken system or do you think it's just more people are playing hockey now in the US?

I think it's more people are playing hockey. Yeah, that's fair. I'm not saying that doesn't, it might be case in point to it. Yeah, I don't have the stats to argue either way. You know, it was an interesting thing that a listener told me probably, I want to say like five months ago they said you should get some hoggy. hockey development guys on here or it could it could be any development guys but from different countries right see what they're focusing on because um you know there's always a giant argument right now that

canada and hockey specifically is slowly falling behind other countries because we've just become complacent and the way we teach way we teach and not like innovating on making kids better essentially and yet we still produce Connor McDavid right that's the if you want to get down the rabbit hole on that. I know you're trying to wrap this up. If you want to get a rabbit hole, the reality is hockey in Canada, right, everyone plays. If you look at the rest of the world as a whole, a very small percentage

plays. So you're not going to have the Greek freaks and guys like that coming out of hockey because you're just limiting your talent pool, right? If you look at like NBA, NBA is blown up as a world. A world thing. You need a pair of shoes. It's played everywhere. So that one percent is a lot harder to make it to the

NBA than it is to the NHL. For a Canadian guy, because you're now getting the best athletes the whole world, right? If you got the best athletes in the whole world playing hockey, now all of a sudden everything changes, right? They're being coached different everywhere, like you said, and now that cream of the crop is even thinner, right? Because it's incredibly tough to make the NHL.

It's incredibly tough to make any of the national sports. Yeah, how tough would it be if, let's just even say all of like Asia, all played hockey. That was their number one sport. Okay, now you've got how many more millions of people playing? one of those, two of those people are taking a spot, right? It's just the way it filters up. And I think you made a good point about the European model

because what we see on the basketball side is the Europeans are so focused on teaching, spacing, and footwork and body positioning. Where in the US with the AAU model, it's just about paying the best guys to play on the same team and they're not necessarily teaching them. So when we're bringing over, Eurek and Alex are European guys that are phenomenal out there,

when they teach, it's just unreal. the detail on footwork and spacing compared to a North American coach because that is the number one thing is making players better whereas in North America it's let's get the 10 best kids and go plan a travel team and just play all summer there's not a lot of teaching going on it's just playing and the teaching has to happen you have to learn and figure it out before you learn how to play properly and that's why they're saying some of these kids coming out of college can't make NBA or pro leagues because they haven't actually learned how to play the game they've just been good athletes.

So I always think about that with hockey, right? Because hockey, those countries you named, high percentage of the population plays hockey. And as you said, to answer my question, more Americans playing hockey, more Canadian guys retiring down there, developing hockey program, it's probably going to continue to grow.

It should be. So it's an interesting case that you look at. Well, I'll think with this, Austin Matthews is from Arizona. Yeah. And he is, you know, the Toronto haters are going to hate me for saying it, but he's like top what?

10 player easy? He's top 10 in the league. And he's coming from Arizona. 20 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever the number is, they weren't developing people in Arizona. No, that's for sure. Probably count them on one hand. Yeah.

And that's the change. That's the globalization of the sport, which I think is really good for hockey. Hockey's strength obviously is parity, right? That's that they live and die on. But as that develops globally, hopefully they're bringing in higher and higher talent. The league's getting younger and younger, right?

I was listening to Wade talk about that, right? When he said when he exited, the skill level was getting higher and higher. Yeah. Or better. Yeah. So, yeah, it's an interesting case study when you look at like all the sports and where the athletes come from and how that filters out, right? Hmm. See, now you got down the rabbit hole with a coach so I could talk about this stuff forever.

This is what happens when Tapp and I end up in the same place. we talked for like three hours and then realized we didn't do anything so yeah well it's the lovely thing about a podcast right yeah always say like oh i just got it you know what i just got a text from here i'll give a show to uh troy uh troy clark try clark found out about the podcast yeah um let's call it a month and a half go two months two months max right you guys i never i knew you're doing it but i'd never driven long enough to think i could listen to it now he's driving a ton and he said he just sent me hey sean I've listened to all your podcasts now, and each one of them offers something special, just finishing taps, and it was a great podcast.

And what I'm getting at is, like, if you enjoy it, it doesn't matter if, well, I just think of myself, it doesn't matter if it's an hour long. Right. Or three, well, the longest one I've ever listened to is Dan Carlin, hardcore history. He's got podcasts that are four hours long, but they're in, like, a five-part series. So that is 20 hours of listening to a guy talk. And I did it gladly because it was World War I. And it was fantastic. Well, on that note, as I texted you this weekend, I polished off the Vic Juba one in one sitting on the bus, right?

So I listened to him. It was hard keeping him on track. He's got so many stories to tell you. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. You could have went down 700 rabbit holes. But, yeah, so I listened to Taps first. And then you said, make sure at the pool, you said make sure you go back and listen to Juba.

I listen to that. And, yeah, it's when you're driving or when you're going places, like for me, this. is now recruiting season, so I'm going to be gone the next couple weeks. I'll be crushing out the episodes that I haven't found, like I said, I listened to Wade's the other day. Yeah. That's fun. And it's fun when you know the people and the content's relevant.

Well, it's one of the cool things about doing this, specifically with my, you know, maybe someday it'll be Don Cherry coming on and whoever, right, in these giant names, but locally I've been able to get guys like yourself and

other people that have done really cool things in our town and nobody knows the full story so it's just cool to sit down and talk about it and learn some things and have a little bit of fun and then the ability to put it right on your truck or on your phone and like instantly and then be able to listen and go along it's just incredibly uh accessible to everybody like it's unbelievable yeah and you talked about that back in the day there's always radio right you can never find out but i think you're doing a great service for the community. I think you've done such a great job of spreading light on athletes and individuals in the

community. So I think you're doing a great thing. And I've heard a lot of people talking about it in hockey dressing rooms, even at my basketball games, I hear people talking about it. So as I said, when I text. Well, now they're going to be talking more about it because I got a basketball guy. They'll ask, well, hey, why did you put on a basketball guy? What's wrong with you?

Why are we thinking that? Hey, I've had Brandy Hofer on, who's an artist in town. And if everybody knows art, like, she's fantastic. And she said, that was like episode 12 or 15 or whatever, she's like, why am I coming on here? It's a hockey podcast. It's not a hockey podcast. It's a podcast. And I just like talking to interesting people.

And I've had people tell me that that's their favorite episode to date. So there you go. I mean, what do I know, right? Like, I just like talking to cool people. So here's your final question. And then I'm going to let you get out of it. Yep. Because I had it written down.

And you're not 50 by any means. But I'm old enough. If you can go back to your 20-year-old self, what piece of advice would you give a? Hmm. Well, I think you may hit it on the head. Knowing where I'm at now, I think going back,

just preparing yourself more for the future, right? Like, you think of all the dumb decisions you make in your 20s. Like, it's absolutely incredible, all the dumb things you did with money, all the wasted time that you had. Like, now as you get older, you always prioritize your time, right?

You're reading or listening to the podcast or trying to learn. I think I wish I would have done more to get myself ready for the career path that I probably knew I was going down. And then I would have told myself, just don't be such an idiot. You know what your 20-year-old self was said? Screw me, man. Yeah, right? He would have, for sure. Yeah, and the lessons need to be learned.

I think you need to figure things out. You need to fail. But I would love to tell myself that. and I would love to tell myself the first couple years you coached, you need to make sure your temper is under control, because I would say I was pretty hot the first couple of years because that's how I was coached, and that isn't really necessarily true to who I am.

So I was yelling and screaming more, and I do raise my voice and I do get mad, but you have to kind of be yourself, and I don't think I was being myself the first couple of years, as being what I thought a coach was and what I saw portrayed to me growing up, and as I started to figure out myself kind of lined up with when the success happened.

So I would give myself a long sit down if we're being honest here. There's a lot of lectures to give that guy. Well, thank you for joining me. Appreciate it having you in. It's been a lot of fun. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

It was a blast. Yeah. Thanks so much. Well, you got the last minute phone call on, what was that, Saturday morning? The dropout, yeah. I was glad I could make it. Awesome.

Cool. Well, thanks for doing this. Okay.