BRUCE BLIZARD – AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “MAN OF THE OVAL” – EPISODE 879
Website – www.bruceblizard.com
Email – bruceblizard@msn.com
Twitter – @bruceblizard
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Bruce Blizard is the author of the book Man of the Oval about former Washington State University Track Coach John Chaplin. The book shares insights into coaching techniques, athlete development, and fostering a winning mindset.
Bruce is a former coach turned author who brings inspiring messages about sports, faith, and community to youth athletes, fans, and coaches worldwide. He has spent over 20 years teaching at Southeastern Washington State University. He brings that expertise to the stories he tells his audiences through his books. During his teaching career, Bruce witnessed the challenges youth face in sports and life. After he walked away from his teaching career, he decided to continue to make a difference by writing stories about redemption, faith, forgiveness, and love.
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Listen and learn on this episode with Bruce Blizard, author of the book “Man of the Oval”.
What We Discuss with Bruce Blizard
- Inspiration and insights to improve your performance
- Coaching techniques, athlete development, and fostering a winning mindset
- The journey and challenges faced by athletes pursuing Olympic-level excellence
- How to support your child’s athletic aspirations
- The balance between athletics and academics
- Determination, resilience, and success in the face of challenges
- The principles of leadership, teamwork, and achieving high performance
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THANKS, BRUCE BLIZARD
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TRANSCRIPT FOR BRUCE BLIZARD – AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “MAN OF THE OVAL” – EPISODE 879
[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight and we are pleased to welcome to the podcast something a little different. Bruce Blizard who wrote a book called The Man of the Oval about John Chaplin, long time track and field coach at Washington State University.
Bruce is jumping out with us because we feel like this book is not just relevant for track and field aficionados, but it is a great book about coaching. So Bruce, first of all, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.
[00:00:37] Bruce Blizard: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. We are excited to
[00:00:42] Mike Klinzing: We are excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into the story behind the book, the book itself, some of the coaching themes that run throughout it.
Let’s start by giving people a quick synopsis of what the book’s all about and where they can find it. And then we’ll dive into some of the bones.
[00:00:59] Bruce Blizard: I think the book is essentially in three parts. There’s two or three chapters that deal specifically with John Chaplin’s biography. We don’t go into an awful lot of detail on that, um, except where it’s relevant to what, to what follows.
I think John’s a really interesting guy with some very, very unique perspectives about, as you said, coaching, not just coaching of track and field, but coaching in general. The second part of the book deals with some of the athletes that he coached over the years, their impressions, their experiences, their attitude about John.
This for me maybe was the most surprising part of the process in that the reactions that the kids who are all now adult or middle aged men the reactions they had to, to Coach Chaplin were nearly unanimous and very consistent. The last part of the book deals with his career as an administrator at the U.
S. and international level of track and field and some of the innovations that he pioneered in that area specifically in the area of the early development of women in the sport, uh, in the elevation of, of Minority individuals into important coaching and management positions both in the U.
S. and internationally. The final section of the book is an extensive appendix of statistics and names and dates and records and Information that John compiled over the years. This is probably more of interest to people who are specifically interested in track and field, but it might be interesting to a general reader as well to simply give you an idea of the breadth of this man’s knowledge and experience.
There is
[00:02:51] Mike Klinzing: certainly, I can vouch for this, as I went through the book, there is certainly plenty of statistics in terms of world records and times and this and that and the other thing that are a part of his legacy.
[00:03:05] Bruce Blizard: So let’s start with
[00:03:07] Mike Klinzing: the why behind the book and how This book came to get written. How did you connect with John?
Did you approach him? Did he approach you? Did someone else approach you with the idea? How did the idea come to be? And then how did you get it to come to fruition?
[00:03:23] Bruce Blizard: It came about due to a, a coaching colleague and good friend of mine named Phil English who, who ran for John in the, in the early 19th or in the mid 1970s, I guess.
John apparently had been approached a number of times by some fairly major publishers and, and writers who are certainly better known than I am about writing a book like this. But he held out, I think, because he didn’t want there to be any sort of misunderstanding about his philosophies or his attitudes about track and field specifically, and about intercollegiate sports especially, particularly.
Phil English, the, the coach that I mentioned approached John. He says, I think I have somebody who, who, who could who could do your career justice. I’ve known Phil since, since, like I said, since he was at WSU. Phil was running at Washington State University while I was the sports editor of what was then the Pullman Herald, which was a a twice weekly newspaper in Pullman, Washington, which no longer exists.
And I was around WSU. I was running myself and doing some training and I knew a few of the WSU athletes and I was able to kind of get a handle on what John was doing in the early days particularly in the area of international athletes and et cetera. Once I left Pullman, I went on with a, with a, with a about a 15, 16 year newspaper career.
And then I entered coaching at first at the college and then at the high school level. And I think what appealed to John when, when Phil began to talk to him about me taking on this project was number one, I was familiar with Washington State University track and field from almost the beginning of John’s time in Pullman.
I’ve been a very close observer of the sport, particularly here in the state of Washington, but also nationally and somewhat internationally, and I’m, I’m I’ve been a coach myself. I still am. And I think John was comfortable with the idea that even though I wasn’t as well known as, as some of the other people who approached him, I probably had a better handle on the, the very unique nature of sports and track and field at Washington State University.
And I’m intimately familiar with with track and field generally, both at the high school and the collegiate level, because I’ve been involved in it myself since the mid 1960s, and so he, he agreed to meet with me and the amazing thing is, is that I hadn’t spoken to John since my days or shortly after the time that I was with the Pullman Herald.
He remembered my name and he remembered what my job had been in Pullman. And at first I was really flattered. And then later on in talking to other people, I, I discovered that John doesn’t forget anybody. Even in his, in his mid eighties now, he’s, he’s got a mind like a steel trap and literally does not forget anything.
so John and I began to talk. We did a, I probably did 20 or 25 interviews with him at his home in outside Pullman. And and then spoke to several dozen of his former athletes coaching colleagues. And the book began to take form from there. During those interviews, I think this
[00:06:39] Mike Klinzing: is one of the things that is always interesting to me.
When you Is he one of those guys that has a photographic memory for this race or this moment or this particular anecdote that he’s telling? Because there are some people that just remember that stuff like it’s nothing. And then I know there are other people that they’ll say, when I look back on the totality of my career, a lot of things end up kind of bleeding together and blending together.
And some of those stories you have to kind of get back from maybe the athletes that. ran underneath John or, or people that have memories and then he, that can kind of jog his memory. Would you describe him as having, as having a photographic memory or more that he was kind of No, I don’t know.
[00:07:24] Bruce Blizard: Photographic memory is the right term. That’s, that’s the way I would describe it. He remembers things from his childhood and formative years in track and field, for example. He made it a point to, to point out that when he began to run high school track and field in, in Los Angeles in the early 1950s, when he was in the ninth grade, he, he, he emphasized this point.
When he was in the ninth grade, that was the last year That sprinters at every level had to dig holes in the track to put their feet into to get a start because starting blocks hadn’t been invented yet. And so his career progresses from there through high school, through a couple of years at Pasadena City College a brief stint in the military and then at WSU.
He can recall details almost to the point of remembering dates and time of day when certain things happened. He’s absolutely passionate. About two things, and I think the fact that he’s, um, his passion is so extreme about these two things, that sort of fuels his desire to kind of hang on to things from the past.
The two things that he’s passionate about are track and field, um, And those were the kind of the cornerstones of his approach to coaching once he got to WSU. But memory wise, it’s really remarkable what he remembers. And talking to some of the athletes that he coached over the years, they go I think this happened about 1983 or 84.
I can’t remember. When I’d ask John about the incident, he’d say, No, that happened on September 3rd, 1983. There you go. Yeah. You know, I mean, it’s, it’s that kind of thing. He’s got an extraordinary intellect a very quick mind which I think caused some people when he was younger to, to view him as sort of caustic in his, in his approach to people who are outside Washington State.
University and, and kind of put people off a little bit because he could respond so quickly to almost anything that one of the things that, that I don’t want to say it surprised me, but one of the things I was struck by was the, was the quality of his intellect. And even though he seemed to be going a thousand miles an hour all the time, his thinking is phenomenally organized even to this day.
And I think he’s 86 now, maybe 85. Gee, I can’t remember.
[00:10:01] Mike Klinzing: I think one of the things that stood out to me in the book is the level of detail in terms of the stories and the things that the anecdotes that are shared within the book. And those obviously come from John’s memory, as you just said. And then, yeah. From some of the athletes that you spoke to and that shared their thoughts of being under the guidance of him over the course of his career, which obviously there was a ton of people.
I think one of the things that stood out to me as I read the book was just the fact that he definitely had a belief system. And if he believed that what he was doing was correct, then he was willing to accept criticism from people. And I don’t know if accept maybe, accept maybe is the wrong word, but he was willing to, to fight that criticism based on the things that he believed were correct.
I know one of the things that comes up throughout the book is the fact that he had a lot of athletes that were from the continent of Africa that Maybe the presence of those athletes on the roster at Washington State rubbed some people the wrong way. And I know that he took that very personally. Can you talk a little bit about some of those stories or a little bit about what that was all about?
Why that was so important to him to be able to open up the track and field world to people from all over?
[00:11:35] Bruce Blizard: I think he’s very proud of the role that he played in, in, in being one of the very first people to, to bring African athletes into the, the American collegiate system. International athletes were not as common as they are today in the 1960s and 70s, but they didn’t tend to be they tended to be from Europe, from Canada.
from the Caribbean. African athletes were just at that time beginning to emerge on the international stage starting with about the 1964 Olympics and, and going forward. John kind of stumbled into that because the first two guys to show up Showed up at WSU almost by accident, and he tells a story of a, of a, of a professor from I believe it was Pacific Lutheran University, who called him up and said, I have a, I have two nephews who want to come to the United States and run.
And professor’s name was John Nno in GE and o and the two boys he was bringing over were John Nino, who was a distance runner, and John Nino , who was a hurdler. And so he’s sitting in his office talking to three guys named John Nino. Which struck him as kind of humorous at the time, and, and when it finally came to, came to pass that the two kids decided that they would come to WSU he had to separate them, so he named one of them Kip Nenow, the hurdler, and to this day, Mike Klinzing.
That’s the name that Kip Nenow goes by. This rubbed people the wrong way, John would say, and I, and I, I think it’s accurate, in that he was bringing athletes to the U. S. who were sort of upsetting the apple cart in terms of, of the perception that people had of a certain track and field event. blAck athletes.
Simply didn’t run long races in the United States in the 60s and 70s. I don’t want to say didn’t run, it was unusual. And now you got, he brought Kenyan athletes into the American college system who immediately began to dominate. The longer races. John Nenno, who was the first of the great Kenyan distance runners at WSU completely dominated the Pac 8 conference in those days, now the Pac 12, the Pac 8 conference by winning just about everything there was to win for three years.
And I think that did rub some people in the wrong way in that. It seemed as if the Kenyans were so good that they had an unfair advantage over the American athletes. thEre is a story, to his credit, that Steve Prefontaine while he was at Oregon seemed to really enjoy the fact that the Africans were here because it caused him, it forced him to sort of, Elevate his game at it, which was already at a very high level.
I think he appreciated the competition. I’m always interested in, in how people come to a particular place or particular philosophy or particular way of doing things. And, um, John explained, explained his philosophy about coaching and his philosophy, particularly about organizing a track team at a place like Washington State, which has to be one of the most remote Division 1 campuses in the country.
I mean, Pullman, Washington is Not in the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from there. It’s, it’s a very small town in a very remote corner of the state of Washington. The nearest major city is Spokane, which I think is about 90 miles away. It’s about it must be 400 miles southeast of Seattle. It the only way to get there is to fly into a very small airport or to drive about 120 miles on once you leave the freeway on two lane road through places like Royal City and La Crosse and Washtucna and, and places like that.
Once you leave the freeway from at Vantage, which is. On the way to Spokane, it’s two lane road through a bunch of little towns that you don’t even notice as you go by them. His first year at, at Washington State, um, was as an assistant coach and Jack Muberry, who had been the head coach for, for many years gave him responsibility for three groups of athletes.
The distance runners, which John admitted he knew nothing about at the time. The shot and discus throwers, which he will tell you he knew even less about at the time. And the Hurdlers, which was a little bit more in his, in his bailiwick. He had three kids on the team in those three events, which basically provided the model for the WSU program from that point on.
Jerry Langdon, for instance is an absolute legend in, among high school distance runners in the state of Washington. He made an Olympic team as a, in the 10, 000 meters as a as a high school senior out of Rogers high school up in Spokane. He went to WSU and had a phenomenal career running the long races at WSU.
So you’ve got this local superstar a kid who was recruited by virtually every. College, it was interested in track and field in the country and he decided to stay relatively close to home in Pullman, Washington. John Van Rienen was a South African athlete and remember at the time South Africa was not allowed to compete internationally because of the apartheid policies of government.
But South Africans could come to the U. S. and and compete collegiately. sO you’ve got Jerry Lindgren, the local superstar. You’ve got John Van Rienen an international athlete who, after he left WSU, would eventually set the world record in the discus throw. Was a Pac 8 and NCAA champion in the discus throw.
The third guy is a guy named Boyd Gittin. He’s from the Seattle area, an area called Shoreline. who was a walk on at WSU, had been a reasonably decent community college hurdler. Not great, not heavily recruited, probably not recruited at all. And because of John’s sort of innovative way of thinking about training hurdlers, Boyd Gittins eventually made the 1968 Olympic team.
So the model is, the paradigm is in place. The local superstar, the international superstar, and an in state walk on. And if you look at WSU’s teams from that point on, that is a pretty good description of where the, of the way those teams were designed. John was insistent at every step in this process that we emphasize the fact that yes, WSU had some of the greatest distance runners who ever lived on their team from other countries, particularly Kenyans.
But his team was primarily made up of, of, of not only American athletes, but in state athletes, kids from the state of Washington, who went to WSU because they were either an afterthought by from other schools or weren’t recruited by other schools, and eventually thrived and, and, and and, and succeeded in that program.
One of the things that was talked about That’s a long winded answer, but
[00:18:28] Mike Klinzing: No, no, I think you laid it out very clearly about sort of what type of program he was trying to build and did build. And one of the things that I know is a theme throughout the book as well is the fact that a lot of the athletes and a lot of the coaches that interacted with him talked a little bit about how he had this high, And in the book it’s called the hit rate, a measure of how much an athlete improves from the time they enter the program to when they leave.
And so the point was is that, yeah, he might get a lot of really good athletes that end up having a lot of success, but he also gets a lot of athletes that come in at one level and then he’s able to take them to the next level. Can you talk a little bit about some of his methodology that enabled him to do that, to be able to allow his athletes to lower their times and increase their distances as throw.
Just the things that he did as a coach that helped him to be successful and help his athletes to grow during the time they were underneath
[00:19:31] Bruce Blizard: him. I think there’s a tendency among track and field coaches at every level, particularly at the college and international level, to sort of live in a silo.
That is, they become experts in, in one fairly narrow field. You’re a throwing coach, you’re a distance coach, you’re a sprint coach, you’re a hurdle coach, you’re a jump coach. And their entire focus becomes that very sort of narrow range of events. And I think in some cases it limits their understanding of the dynamics of other events.
I think where John might have been a little bit ahead of his time was that what he was primarily interested in were the, were the specific set of athletic characteristics that would allow an athlete to realize whatever his potential was and then apply a training program designed to develop those athletic characteristics.
For example, distance running coaches traditionally, and I, and I believe this is probably kind of starting to change, but distance running coaches traditionally tend to focus on things like miles per week to, to evaluate the effectiveness of an athlete’s training or an idea that there are a certain number of repetitions that have to be done during a workout.
I think John recognized that that’s not necessarily the best way to think about training. He made a really interesting statement in terms of training the distance runners that he had, which remember included some of the greatest distance runners that ever lived, Henry Rono, and eventually almost Bernard Legat, etc.
He said, we’re going to train four days a week, and I don’t care what you do the other days. You don’t have to do anything. Now, these guys being motivated, they probably went out and got a run in. But he says, I’m not interested in how many miles a week they run. I’m interested that they’re able to do the things that we’re going to do during those four days a week and execute the dynamics of a particular training.
exercise correctly. It’s almost as if it reminds me a little bit of how a coach in a team sport, say basketball, would insist on an athlete endlessly practicing fundamentals. There are certain things you have to be able to do as an athlete in order to be a successful basketball player. And I think John’s approach was similar, that there are certain things that you have to do athletically.
to be a great distance runner, for example, and it involves much more than just going out and pounding out mile after mile after mile after mile. I think people would have been surprised at how low the mileage rate, the weekly mileage was for some of these guys who were running so fast. And again, that doesn’t just apply to the Kenyan athletes.
Some of the American kids that went there did extremely well. on that sort of program. So I think he was really, really interested in exactly what does it take? What does an individual have to do in order to maximize his potential? In a specific event, whether it’s a hundred meters or the long jump or the shot put or the 5, 000 meters.
And as a result, I think he understood better than some coaches at the time, the specific dynamics of what it, what it took to be a successful competitor across the board. When you
[00:23:11] Mike Klinzing: talk about the, I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing it right, but the Durer brothers, they had an experience with Coach Chaplin where he gave them an opportunity based on the fact that one of them had some ability on the track and So, Just tell me that story.
I found that story to be quite interesting.
[00:23:32] Bruce Blizard: I really enjoyed that because I was with a newspaper in suburban Tacoma when Chris Doerr, the younger of the two brothers, was in high school. And I covered his high school and some others in Puyallup, Washington. He was from Rogers High School in Puyallup.
And I remember him as being an extraordinarily personable kid. Who was a very, very, very good 400 meter runner who happened to come through the high school system here in Washington, right behind a guy from Tacoma named Darryl Robinson, who to this day remains the high school record holder on the 400 meters.
So Chris Dewar is one of the top 8 or 10 high school 400 meter runners in the country, and doesn’t win a state title until he’s a senior because he’s following Darryl Robinson through he went to WSU to, to run track. I’m not sure how much he was recruited by other schools. When I, when I saw him run as a high schooler, I thought he was a phenomenal talent had a very good freshman year.
I think he placed second in the pack eight meet. I don’t think it was a pack 10 yet. I think it was still a pack eight. And, and we’re just kind of getting on with it. Well, John apparently goes into the gym one day. One of the gyms at WSU and, and sees this guy playing basketball, and it turns out to be Chris Doerr’s brother.
And Al Doerr was was on the WSU basketball team and, and John said, would you ever think about track? And he said, well, yeah, I ran track at, in high school, a different school that his brother went to. They had moved right after Al graduated. And he thought about it and, well, he came out. Ended up being not as good as Chris in the 400, but not too bad.
And, and at the end of that, that year I think it was the first year, it might’ve been the next year. Chris and Al ran on a, on a, on a four by 400 meter relay team that won the the conference title. Which both said it would, it was the highlight of their, of their athletic career, being able to, to share a conference championship with each other. Al Doerr went on to a distinguished military career. I think he retired as a colonel. And both of these guys, when I met them Chris Doerr was dealing with some health issues which I have heard have been rectified and he’s, he’s doing well.
Despite all that, they, they both in their 50s looked like they could still run 46 seconds in the 400. It’s interesting,
[00:25:52] Mike Klinzing: again, just when you think about the number of stories in the book of him giving people a chance and then having super high expectations for those people that he gave a chance to. And another thing that I know after reading the book, was really, really important to him as he went through.
He talked a lot and so a lot of his athletes talked about the fact that he wanted to hold them accountable for going to class and getting And education. I know he talked about the fact that it was not necessarily the process of getting a grade with him. It was more about the education. There’s a quote in the book.
It says something to the effect of that. If you haven’t learned how to solve problems after you leave here, you’ve either wasted your time. And my money or my money and your time and whatever, just the fact that he wanted his athletes to be more than just athletes. He wanted them to succeed in the classroom and eventually in life.
So I don’t know if you have a favorite story from the book that kind of matches up with that theme, but it’s definitely something that runs throughout the book.
[00:27:04] Bruce Blizard: Yeah, there’s two instances that I can think of. Washington State University during, I, I think the late 80s had what was probably the best dual meet track team in the country.
In fact, track and field news, I think, had them ranked number one. And at the time, the University of California was ranked number two, and Washington State and the University of California had a dual meet scheduled, um, to basically determine who would be the national dual meet champion, which is something that we don’t talk about much in track and field anymore.
Dual meets have kind of gone by the wayside, but at the time it was kind of a big deal. WSU had a great Kenyan athlete who who would have dominated the long races in that meet, and essentially WSU would have won it fairly easily. Well, he had to take an engineering exam, an exam that was only given once a year that he had to take on that day.
in Order to, to get into, to graduate school and, and, and continue with his career. John told the team that this guy was not going to run. He was going to take this exam and if it cost him the meat, it cost him the meat. The team’s reaction, according to John and a couple of guys that I talked to who were, who were present was, yeah, well, well, duh, of course he’s going to take the test.
You know, we’ll pick up the slack. And they almost did. They lost a cow by one or two points. John was more serious about the notion that his athletes succeed in the classroom and get a degree than he was about, about their performance on the track or in the field, and I don’t think it’s even close.
The second story has to do with the fact that he had an athlete who left, who didn’t graduate, and John basically nagged him in person on the phone and with letters and through third parties for 20 years to finish his degree. And the guy finally finished his degree and John said it was one of the proudest days of his life because he had been so disappointed.
Not in the kid, but so disappointed that he hadn’t created an environment which would have made him, made it possible for this, this, this guy to graduate on time. hE would not hesitate to leave an athlete home from a meet, whether it was a a local, a very informal local meet up in Spokane or from the national championships, if it was going to interfere with with an athlete’s opportunity to to do well in the classroom.
He wasn’t. So concerned about things like grade point averages and and and test scores and things like that He was concerned that his athletes do what they needed to do in order to leave Washington State as quickly as possible with a degree in hand The there’s a one of the chapters is titled. You can’t eat the metals He said, it doesn’t matter how successful you are on the track, if you don’t have that degree and you haven’t found a way to make a living and make yourself useful, then he felt like he hadn’t done his job, that he’d sold these kids short.
I think this is the thing about John that surprised me the most, because his persona, his public persona through all of these years was somebody who was, was very gruff. Often confrontational, occasionally profane when I began to see, when I began to hear him talk about his concern for the future of his athletes, and then when I heard the athletes tell me that John was the reason that An overwhelming majority of them went on to very successful adult life.
That surprised me a little bit, because it was a side of John that nobody talked about. What they talked about was his, his, his desire to be confrontational. His, his willingness to, to be abrupt when he, when he thought or knew he was in the right. anD not always in the most diplomatic manner, at least publicly.
So I think the concern that he had for those athletes was, was maybe one of the most remarkable things of the whole process for me. And the fact that every athlete I talked to, even a couple didn’t really get along with him that well, but every athlete I’ve talked to said the same thing. That they credited John to a tremendous extent to whatever, to wherever they had arrived later in life.
Can you tell the story about
[00:31:34] Mike Klinzing: the steeplechase record and the depth of the pit and why? John didn’t want that particular athlete to set the world record at the
[00:31:46] Bruce Blizard: During all these years, I mean, if there’s, if there was a, a more fierce rivalry in sports than Washington, or Washington State University and the University of Oregon on the track, I’m not aware of it.
It was everything that you would expect a major rivalry in football or basketball, especially when the meet was held in Eugene, because at the time still is, but not so much. At the time, Eugene, Oregon was the epicenter of track and field in the United States. 12, 14, 15, 000 people would show up for a dual meet between Washington State and Oregon.
Because both teams were consistently right near the top of the, of the national rankings. Both teams had international quality athletes. It was a, a great thing. We were living in Seattle at the time. It was shortly after We left WSU. My wife was running at Seattle Pacific University by then.
anD we had heard that Henry Rono, the great Kenyan runner had slowed down in the last lap of the steeplechase in Eugene. And it was because John didn’t want Henry to set the world record in front of the fans at Eugene. He didn’t feel like they deserved it. That wasn’t quite the issue. Henry Ronald was on world record pace with a lap left in the race and John yelled at him to slow down.
So he slows down to a very pedestrian rate for the last last lap, something like 79 or 80 seconds, which an international quality steeplechase is. Jogging, basically. Didn’t set the world record, but he set the collegiate record, and I think the time was something in the neighborhood of 814. Well, the problem was, from John’s point of view, that he believed that the steeplechase pit, where the water is in Eugene, was not regulation depth.
It’s a minor point, but it would have disqualified the record. Well, after the, the meet John and, and Henry Rono met with the local press, and one of the reporters said something to the effect that, yeah, Henry Rono is a great runner, but can, can the, can the kid read and write? This is with the young man standing right there, and John just kind of went off.
And he said something about, we didn’t want to set the record here, you got crappy fans, you got a crappy press, etc., etc., I hate Oregon. Well that wasn’t quite the case, but that’s the story that got out. So about a month later In a nearly empty Husky Stadium in Seattle, the track was inside the stadium there, 65, 70, 000 seat stadium with about 200 people in it.
Henry Rono obliterates the world record, runs 8. 05. We were present, my wife was in that meet at a different event, obviously. To this day, one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, to have a world record set, basically in front of a crowd made up of other athletes and a handful of reporters.
I think what the point that John was trying to make which would, he would kind of have to re emphasize later on that there was a perception that the Kenyan athletes who came here only came to run. And I think that, that what I know now, I mean, talking to, talk to a number of the, the, the African athletes who were here, they came here to study and, and running was just sort of secondary.
Yeah,
[00:35:12] Mike Klinzing: that comes through. Loud and clear in so many stories in the book. And I think that it almost feels like there was, I don’t want to say dual personalities, but there was this perception of him in one way. And then the people that were closest to him, I think, looked at him in a different way.
There’s a story In the book about the 1996 Olympics and Linford Christie in the 100 meters when he gets disqualified for his second fall start. And John’s the guy who comes out and tells Linford Christie that he’s not going to be allowed to run that race and defend his town. Olympic hundred meter title.
And there’s a couple of different quotes in there talking about how John was the perfect person to be able to deliver that, which obviously very difficult news, but just tell that story and, and why John, what his recollection of that maybe wasn’t, if you guys talked about that and just what that story is all about.
[00:36:18] Bruce Blizard: This is, I think what John’s perception would have been or what his way of handling it would have been. He never argued from a position of And I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Well, the reason he never argued from a position of uncertainty is that he knew the rules. And the procedures so well that there, there wasn’t any uncertainty.
Okay. He’d obviously seen the fact that Lyford Christie had jumped the gun. Lyford Christie knew he had jumped the gun, but you can understand an athlete’s position at that point. You know, John came out and simply explained to him, said, look, you are gonna leave the track. We can do this. You know, in a very unpleasant way publicly, or you can come with me and, and, and we’ll let the, let the race go on and, and everything will be good.
When I saw that on TV, I remember seeing John Chaplin come out and his demeanor was so different from what I had witnessed in other sort of situations which could have become confrontational. He was absolutely definite that Linford Christie was going to leave the track and he was absolutely very calm, very reasonable, and dealt with the situation in a way that both put the athlete at ease and let him know that there was not another option.
This was what was going to happen. And I think that that, that is one of the things that, that allowed him to be successful as an administrator on the international, national, international level once he left WSU. The, the incident in the 96 Olympics took place after he, he, he retired from coaching at WSU.
he Was the, the head referee in, in, in that track meet. And I, I believe by that time had already become the head of international competition in the men’s track and field track and field committee of what was what was to become the USA track and field Federation. It was. It wasn’t an uncertainty based upon John Chaplin, it was a certainty based upon the fact that John Chaplin understood the rules and procedures and the protocols better than anyone else.
And that would, that would come up again and again and again. It came up when he was the the head coach of the 2000 Olympics. And an American shot putter was gonna have to be removed from the team because he tested, had a positive drug test. And he handled that in exactly the same way without being confrontational in a way that let the athlete know, you have no option.
This is the rule. And this is the way we’re going to apply the rule because it’s the only way that the rule can be applied. And he also had a backup plan for replacing him with another athlete who was already on the team. hIs, his, his career as an administrator in some ways is quite a bit different, I think, in his career as a, as a coach.
Because he was now having to comp, not compromise, but he was now having to sort of nudge events in, in very political committee situations, et cetera, that where as a coach he could direct events and dealing with, with, with young people rather than dealing with, with adults who often I think had their own agenda.
Did you talk to him at all
[00:39:58] Mike Klinzing: about how the transition. Out of coaching was for him in terms of, obviously he didn’t retire, but he left the coaching profession to get more on the administrative side. And I know that for people who are ultra competitive, the way that it certainly seems that he was, sometimes that’s a difficult transition.
Did you talk to him at all
[00:40:20] Bruce Blizard: about that? Yeah he left WSU. There was, there were hints that there were going to be NCAA sanctions for which he was completely exonerated. They, they didn’t come to anything. In fact, the NCAA and the, and the, by then, I think the PAC 10 conference said, like, you didn’t do anything wrong.
There was a mistake made, but it wasn’t on the part of WSU track. The baseball program at the same, was in the same situation. And again, nothing came of that. I think what caused him to leave coaching at WSU was when the university administration, athletic administration, decided that they were going to put some pretty severe restrictions on who he could and could not recruit.
aNd I think even though he used, I think he made available opportunities to a lot of in state athletes, he didn’t want to be limited In terms of the number of the amount of financial aid he would be able to offer to international athletes. And when they said, well, you have to spend X amount of your tuition budget on in state kids, he was, well, that’s going to tie my hand.
I can’t be expected to compete with USC and UCLA and Stanford at the, at the conference level and with, with the likes of Arkansas and Florida. And, and, and. Some of the other major, major track and field programs at the NCAA level. I can’t compete. And if I can’t compete, I’m not going to do this. Um, WSU continued to be relatively successful under Rick Sloan, who was a chaplain’s assistant during all this time.
But I think the scholarship situation has since created some real problems for not only WSU, but for some other universities as well. He made the transition. I’m not sure even transition is the right word. He’d always been involved in the administrative side as a coach. And I think that because of his.
reputation regarding the by the book interpretation of the rules made him attractive to the, to, to USA, USA track and field and he just sort of rose through the ranks very, very quickly to the point where he, he put himself in a position to influence the development of women’s track and field at a time when it really needed help.
Cool. And to be able to place female and minority candidates into prominent coaching and administrative positions with the men’s program. He made it possible for female coaches, for instance, To coach on the men’s international teams. Men had been coaching the women’s teams for years. That’s another thing that I think surprises people about John.
He very, very conservative person, but in terms of making opportunities available to women and minorities, he was way ahead of his time. And I think that that. had as much to do with the positive direction that track and field in the U. S. began to take at that point as anything else. An example of a, of a, of a coach up here, a high school coach and a community college coach in Spokane, Linda Lanker.
I’ve met Linda a couple times and she’s a remarkable woman. John was at a, at an indoor meet at the University of Idaho. He kind of had it in the back of his mind. He needed to find a, a, a female, a woman who could co, who he could put in a position to coach a young men’s team on a trip to China. It was gonna be a, a junior team under 20 team.
And she saw, he saw Linda didn’t know who she was. We saw Linda. who had two young athletes backed up against the wall. They’d obviously done something they shouldn’t have, and she is reading them the riot act and these two young men who just tower over her, Linda’s not very tall. They are like, yes, Ms.
Linda. No, Ms. Linda. Yeah, we’re sorry, Ms. Linda. And it was like the attention that she was able to get from these two young men. And was obviously having a very positive impact on them in a, in an uncomfortable situation stuck with him. And Linda’s telling me the same story, and Linda’s point of view, she says, well, I went home from the meet, I didn’t know John Chaplin was, he introduced himself at the meeting, he knew, she knew who he was, didn’t know him.
So she gets home, and her son walks in the room, and he said there’s a phone for you, somebody John something. So she says, and John Chaplin says, well, how’d you like to go to China? This is the way you did things. No introduction, just, how’d you like to go to China? And she’s like, this is a crank call. I don’t know who this is.
She kind of blows it off, hangs up the phone. And sometime later, I think a week or so, Her son comes back in the room, says, Mom, your name was just on TV. I guess you’re going to China. In other words, John had decided through that very, very brief conversation, this is the woman he needed to work with a young men’s team on an international trip to China.
Um, he’s an uncanny judge of people in that regard, I think. And, and there are numerous instances when he simply said to somebody, With very little introduction, you’re the person for this job. Do you want it? And it would be literally would be that blunt, no much introduction, not much verbal foreplay, just, do you want the job?
And as a result, I think he accelerated the progress. of women in the sport, both on the track and on the coaching and administrative side of it.
[00:46:14] Mike Klinzing: What about his background from what you could gather led him to hold that position about trying to elevate women and minorities? Because as you kind of alluded to it, it feels like, again, with someone who is maybe conservative in one side of their personality, how did he get to the point where That was sort of a cause that was important to him and that he was championing.
What, what about his background kind of got him to that point?
[00:46:47] Bruce Blizard: I don’t think it’s, it’s either political or ideological. I think given his background growing up, his father was a kind of a counterculture figure, a playwright who was blacklisted during the, during the, The Red Scare in the 1950s and, and he was, he was taken as a young man, taken to meetings of subversive organizations and borderline communist organizations.
I think what he developed as, as he’s Going through this process, and I’m not sure if developed at the right word. I think it might have been innate, an innate sense of what is fair and unfair, an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong, an innate sense that you don’t judge a person’s capabilities by their gender or their skin color or their ethnic background, that you can either do the job or you can’t.
And all of those other factors are irrelevant. So when he sees Linda Lanker working with these two young men, and Linda’s, she sees her working with these two young men, and the attention and the respect that they obviously accord her, his first impression isn’t, this is a woman that I can put in this position.
His first impression is, this is someone who can do the job I need to have done with this team. And I think the same thing applied with, with black coaches and black administrators and black athletes it was simply the notion that you judge a person based on what he or she is capable of and what he or she is willing to do rather than who he or she is or what he or she looks like.
And that was echoed by a number of people that I spoke to. John’s approach to most things appeared to simply spring naturally out of who he is. He is, as I said before, he could be abrasive, he could be confrontational, he could be profane, but he could never, ever under any circumstances be dishonest or inauthentic.
That
[00:49:00] Mike Klinzing: comes through loud and clear. In the book, and as you said, the number of stories that the athletes themselves told and recollected about their experiences with John, I think tell the whole story in terms of who this guy really was. And there was certainly a perception out there among them. Some people that, as you said, he kind of rubbed people the wrong way at times because he was willing to be blunt, he was willing to respond quickly to things, and if he felt like he was right, he wasn’t going to back down.
And there’s not that many people in any walk of life that are willing to do those things. And so, I think sometimes when we run into those people, they kind of take us aback because not many people are always willing to stand on their principles. But I think if you’re a great coach and if I’m reading this book as As a basketball coach, what I’m taking away from this is what can I, what lessons can I learn from John Chaplin, who ran one of the best track programs in the history of American collegiate sports?
What can I take away? I take away a couple things. One is just how important it is to have good people be a part of your program and to insist that those people are there for more than just their sport, that they’re there for the academic part of it, for learning to eventually become a positive citizen.
I take from the fact that he didn’t care about the The color of your skin or where you were from. He cared about you as a person. And that comes through loud and clear in every interaction that he had with his athletes. He was clearly demanding, but he was also someone that Mike Klinzing. Every single kid that ran on those track teams that you talked to, it sounds like that all of those kids believe that he had their best interest at heart and that he cared about them.
And even though he may have been tough on them, they look back on those times fondly as someone who really pushed them to be at their best and then clearly sent them out into the real world to be able to be prepared to have success. So I think as As I’m reading this book and I’m thinking about it from just a general coaching perspective, I think there’s so many good lessons in the book for coaches of all sports.
And I think I laid out a couple, I don’t know if there’s any more, Bruce, anything that you can think of that I maybe didn’t hit on that are clear lessons that a coach from any sport could apply from John’s legacy.
[00:51:44] Bruce Blizard: I think you touched on it just now. I know this from my own coaching experience. I’ve been coaching high school kids mostly and college a little bit since the mid 70s.
And I think that kids are most receptive. To what you are trying to do with them athletically when they at least can get a hint at How what they’re doing is how what they’re learning from the process is going to benefit them outside of athletic that is if if coaches are sincere about The development of a whole person as opposed to simply the development of a runner or a jumper or a basketball player or a soccer player or a football player.
That the things they’re doing on the track or on the court or on the field have to have some sort of application beyond the track or the court or the field. And the connection doesn’t have to be direct and immediate. It’s almost cliched, I think, now, but it’s something that I found that kids respond to.
Discipline organization, understanding that process matters as much as the results delaying gratification balancing all of the things that a kid in high school or college has going on in their life, being able to organize what you do in order to, to, to make the best of all the opportunities you’re given, I think, is the most valuable part of it.
Now, John’s approach was a little bit more narrow. He had a bit of a captive audience. College campus in the middle of nowhere, but he was absolutely determined that the kids that he came in contact with were going to leave Washington State University, not only as better people, but with the skills and the knowledge.
And the desire to be useful. He used that term several times in our conversation. He wanted these kids to success on the, succeed on the track, but he wanted them ultimately to be useful. That is to leave the university. With what the university is really intended to do, for what it exists for, is to create people who can go into the world and be useful.
We were my wife and I were familiar with one of the early Kenyan athletes in the mid 70s, Josh Kimato, um, one of the great Kenyan runners. And Today, when you talk about athletes of that quality if they stay in college anymore because they can turn pro fairly young, Um what are you going to do when, when, when you’re out of college?
You know, I’m going to continue to run, I’m going to make some money, get a shoe contract, etc., etc., etc. With Josh and some of the other Kenyan athletes we came into contact with, Their desire was to use their talent as a vehicle to get an education that would allow them to go home to Kenya, or to Nigeria, or to the Ivory Coast, and be useful.
And that, I think, is as important a part of John Chaplin’s legacy as anything else. I think it’s the most important part of any successful coach’s legacy, and I don’t think John is unique in this regard. I think some of the people that we recognize as great coaches in other sports have that same concern, that same desire, that same determination that the kids are going to leave their programs and lead it to lead a useful adult life.
[00:55:29] Mike Klinzing: I like just framing it that way in terms of becoming useful and being able to solve problems which I know John talked about in the book, as opposed to strictly just, hey, we want you to focus on academics and get good grades. Because ultimately, the two are related, but I think they’re slightly different in that we’ve all probably known people who are book smart and can get A’s in classes and yet in the real world, they sometimes struggle because they don’t have those street smarts or that common sense.
And I think just, I get a sense that from reading the book that if I was an athlete underneath John and he was coaching me that he would be talking about not, Hey, what grade did you get in economics class? But Hey, what did you learn in economics class that you can apply to your life? And it’s a subtle difference, but I do think it’s a meaningful difference.
[00:56:28] Bruce Blizard: I know this is true at the high school level, and I know a number of kids who’ve gone on and been fairly good collegiate athletes. I think activities generally, athletic, music, art, auto mechanics, for crying out loud, this is where Academics and the real world link up. Because book smart isn’t good enough in athletics, or music, or drama, or any of the other things that we kind of expose kids to.
You have to be able to perform in a situation which, by definition, is, to varying degrees, stressful. And what you do, what you learn, I think, in athletics, particularly in the other activities, is that you have to rely on much more on yourself, your own determination, your own will, and not simply on something that you learned in the classroom.
It, it, to me, it’s more valuable because it transcends what you learn in the classroom. Not that what you learn in the classroom is unimportant, but the skills that are going to allow you to be successful as an adult, I think are learned more effectively in the gym or on the stage or on the court or on the field.
I think that’s where book smart. And, and real world street smartest, if you will, come together. It’s the
[00:58:04] Mike Klinzing: beauty of sports. I mean, I think no matter what sport you’re talking about, that the best coaches, that’s what they do. They utilize their sport to be able to teach kids life lessons and things that they can apply for.
The remainder of their life. And I say this to basketball coaches on the podcast, Bruce, all the time, that like, one of the things that we’re blessed with is the ability to make an impact on young people and do it through a game that we love. And I don’t take that for granted. I think the coaches that we’ve talked to over the years on the podcast, I think they realize that, and it’s something that.
Not everybody had when you go back 30, 40 years ago, I’m not sure that that was a prevailing philosophy. It was certainly less common in John’s time when he was coaching than it is today. I think people have come to that realization, but it’s, as you said, a couple of times during the pod that he was ahead of his time and in so many ways.
And so I just think compliments to you on the book. I think it’s really, really well done. I think we’ve hit on a bunch of different themes that if you’re listening. You know that the book, yes, it’s about track and field, but to me, it’s a bigger character study about what. It makes a great coach. And as you shared, and as I tried to pull out from my read of the book, there’s a lot of things that coaches of any sport, I don’t care if it’s basketball, track and field, soccer, football, baseball, whatever, there’s lots of different lessons that you can pull out.
So kudos to you. Kudos to John for putting together a great book. Before we wrap up, I don’t know if you want to. Give us one final thing that maybe we missed out of the book or make one last point and then Share one more time how people can find the book where they can get it and then after you do that I’ll jump back in and wrap things up
[01:00:03] Bruce Blizard:When I visited John’s house for the first time. He lives in a gorgeous place on about two acres Literally in the middle of a wheat field from his house, you can’t see anything except wheat in every direction. You go in his house and go in his study where we’re going to talk and the first thing you do, you look around for mementos and plaques and coach of the year and posters.
There’s none of that. His house is full of art. He’s an art collector. I Looked very closely at his bookshelves. There’s not a single work of fiction. They’re all history and philosophy and religion. And he’s an intellectual. There aren’t, there is nothing in his study, nothing in his house that would lead you to believe that he was a track and field coach at all.
Which leads me to believe that Despite his public persona, there is way more to this guy than most people could possibly imagine. The only thing in his study which is remotely track and field related is a very small photograph in a corner, kind of around a corner. of Henry Roanoke finishing a race with his WSU singlet on.
That’s it, and I think this is probably true of a lot of very successful people. That they end up being much more complicated than their public. Persona would, would seem to suggest, and I’m absolutely certain, and then with John Chaplin, this is, that’s definitely the case. You can get the book the best way to get it right now is off my website for one thing, it’s cheaper there than it is on Amazon, and I’m having a little bit of trouble with the Amazon version.
It’s bruceblizard.com, all lowercase, one z in Blizard. Go there and click on the bookstore link and you’ll see Man of the Oval and my four novels that I’ve written are all on there. And I usually ship the same day that I get the order. So you’ll get it fairly quickly.
[01:02:10] Mike Klinzing: Bruce, again, congratulations on the book. It is a great read. I really enjoyed it. I think any coach, regardless of your knowledge or affiliation with track and field, I think you’ll be able to find value in the book as a coach. So please go out, pick up a copy of the book. I think it’ll be well worth your time.
Bruce, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to jump on with us to share a little bit of the backstory of the book and hit on some of the major themes. Much appreciated. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.