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You're listening to the Hanging with Lady podcast, where we break down hot topics in athletic administration and lessons learned through leadership.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Now, here are your hosts, Josh Matthews and Don Baker. Today we stay closer to home and sit down with Jim Peoples, who serves as the Director of Athletics at Piedmont College in Damores, Georgia. Jim is a true product of athletics and a former baseball coach with 360 victories under his belt. It won't take long for you to feel his passion for the job of athletic administration as we talk about having a clear mission and vision as a leader, as well as the changing landscape of athletics and what he is looking for in athletes who wish to compete at the next level. Let's settle in and get to know Coach Jim Peoples.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Coach, we're so glad to have you joining Donna Me for this episode of Hanging with the AD. Thanks for taking time out of the college life, the college AD's life to uh help us get better today.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Happy to do it and uh happy to be uh invited to be a part of your podcast. So hopefully I'll have something insightful today.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Oh, no doubt. I'm gonna look forward to this one. You and I have uh known each other for a while back to our baseball days. So you'll you'll you'll definitely make us better. But hey, for our listeners who may not know you, Jim Peoples is the director of athletics at Piedmont College in Denrus, Georgia. And in case you're saying, where in the world is that? It's in the beautiful Northeast Georgia Mountains up above Gainesville, Georgia, um, up there near South Carolina, North Carolina area. So uh great place to be. Coach Peoples was named to the AD position on July 1st, 2015, after serving several years previously as the assistant associate AD there at Piedmont. Additionally, he served as a head baseball coach at Piedmont from 2002 to 2016, winning 360 games in those 15 seasons. As he enters his second decade as their AD, Piedmont Athletics continues to flourish, winning conference championships on a regular basis, winning conference presidents' cups and commissioner cups on several occasions as well. You'll see if you go look at Coach People's bio, he's one of those guys that has a winning record in everything he does. So he just got it, and we'll learn about that today. But Coach People started as a football coach, then moved over to baseball uh before getting into athletic administration. So has a little bit of the diverse background from athletic standpoints there. But we'll stop right there. We'll let uh Jim tell us a little bit more about his journey in the world of athletics. Coach, we call it the back of the baseball card bio, so it's right up your alley. Uh tell us for a minute what the back of Jim People's baseball card might look like.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Well, the the the back of my card would uh start um at my alma mater, Westminster College. Um I had the privilege to now, as I look back on it, just be in small college athletics. So my college football coach Joe Fusco is um in the College Football Hall of Fame. Coach won five national championships during his time as the head football coach. Our former football coach, who still worked in the athletic department when I was a student athlete there. Uh Coach Harold Burry, also in the College Football Hall of Fame for coaching. And I worked a lot with Coach Barry as a uh student worker in the athletic department, officiating and taking care of the field house and doing different things. And coach just poured into me every chance that he had to. Buzz Riddle is in the College Basketball Hall of Fame. He was our golf coach at the time. He had stepped away from basketball. And just to be surrounded by these men who just took time, especially when I graduated and started coaching for those two years, coaching football and baseball, they just poured into me. Um and just not realizing, I guess at that age, how important and impactful that would be was uh just instrumental. And I actually got to spend some time earlier this fall with Coach Fusco. I was back home in Pittsburgh for a wedding and wanted to stop by and see him. And uh coach was also our athletic director for years and years, so got to spend time with him and his wife, and he just took that opportunity again to pour in and ask me questions about what it was like right now, how things were going here, and my role as director of athletics, and shared some stories of his time. So um that gave me a great start, and I was always I guess amazed at how many people on my journeys knew about what Coach had accomplished, what what Coach Fusco stood for, how he ran our program at Westminster, and just that how many doors uh it opened for me. Um I took that time then after finishing up with my graduate degree at Slippery Rock, I went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, also surrounded by just some unbelievable coaches um during my two years there at Wesleyan. Um didn't really understand what that education was like and that kind of school. So Wesleyan is in a conference called the NESCAC with some of the best schools in the country, Williams, Amherst, Trinity, um just high academic institutions. And I think the thing I learned there quickly was uh that all the kids were smarter than I was. So if they asked questions and I didn't know the answer, it was better for me to not BS it, but go ask the head coaches that I worked with what the correct answer was because they saw through BS pretty quickly, these these young men that I had a chance to work with. But the uh fabulous time in my life working there for those two years. And again, just being surrounded by some amazing coaches and taking every opportunity that I could to learn from each of them. I think that's one of the things that the Coach Fusco instilled in me, that our basketball coach at Westminster, Coach Gal Breath instilled in me. Like always taking opportunity to learn from other great coaches, whether they coach your sport or not. From there, I spent nine years um as an assistant athletic director and assistant baseball coach working for another Hall of Famer um in the College Baseball Hall of Fame, Tom Austin. And every day, and I tell people this and they think that I'm crazy, but I'm telling you, men, every day at practice or every opportunity that we had to play in a game, I learned something about the game of baseball from Coach. He was just he's just amazing at the game of college baseball. Um got to be in that league at that time with North Carolina Wesley, and it was coached by Mike Fox. Um, and a lot of people know Coach Fox's name from all his success at the University of North Carolina and uh Abe Knaff and his program at Ferrum at the time, and just an unbelievable the rivalry that we had between the three of us during those years was just amazing. So, to be a part of what I'm gonna tell you guys, some of the just most hard-fought college baseball rivalries and small college athletics was really special. Um, and uh got to compete against guys like Billy Wagner, who I think at some point will be a Hall of Famer. He was there at Ferrum during that time. I could not figure out how in the world Abe Knaff got somebody that good to wind up at Ferrum. If you've never been to Ferrum, Virginia, people go, Well, where's Ferrum? I go, Well, if you watch the show Moonshiners, and you know where Tim and Tickle are from, that's where Ferrum is at. It is in the freaking middle of nowhere. Um, and I think the moonshiners and the people who bought Moonshine came out of the hills for our games with Ferrum every time we were there. So it was an interesting uh atmosphere and environment to play college baseball in. There you go. Um, and then came here to Piedmont. Um, a lot of men in Georgia were very instrumental in me getting this opportunity. Coach Buchanan, um, longtime coach at Parkview, somehow was friends with our president, um, Ray Clear at the time.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

And well, it's hard to get a better person to be friends with a president than him.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

No, no question about it. But a couple of those men from my time working Georgia Tech camps um really told told the the the president here, Dr. Clear, that they recommended me. And uh that recommendation kind of went a long way because I sat in his office. He offered me the job before he ever started interviewing me. So I'm like, well, those guys' word goes pretty far. So I'm glad I got to make good friends with guys like Coach Bach and Bobby Howard and some men like that who Dr. Clear knew. Um, so they were really instrumental in opening the doors for me to come to Piedmont. And I can tell you guys, when when I set foot on the campus, it felt like I was home back in western Pennsylvania, which was uh really special because it's been a just an awesome place for Laura and I to raise our family, and now we're watching uh our two grandsons grow up in this community. So it's having our oldest grandson hang around the athletic department. Um, and now our coaches, some of our coaches, are pouring into him because he comes to the camps and does things. So he tells me his ambition today is to play for our men's basketball coach, Greg Neely. He he loves Coach Neely, so he wants to play basketball for Greg Neely at Piedmont. Good.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

That's good stuff. Now, Jim, I think one very unique thing in your online bio is a picture of you in your khakis in your Piedmont pullover out on baseball or softball field with a rake in your hand. And we have interviewed a lot of athletic leaders in the college space, and I can tell you that that was the first time that I had seen a picture like that on the bio page of a collegiate A B. Uh, while your bio says a ton of great things uh about your time there as a leader, what do you want that picture to say about your leadership?

SPEAKER_02 10:49

I mean people ask me what my leadership style is, I tell them I'm a servant leader. Uh I'm here to serve our coaches and serve our student athletes. So I think it's important that our student athletes and that our young assistant coaches like there's no job that I'm not gonna step in and and and do. So, you know, one of the things I do in the spring so I can help our softball coaches, like their time in but in college softball, you always play a double header. So they get about 10 minutes, um, 15 minutes in between games. So I try to make sure I'm a baseball guy, I know how to take care of a field so I can I can get the field turned around and get it back so that they can have time with the team to kind of go over any adjustments, any changes, anything that they need to do in between game time. So I mean, it's not like it's putting me out, it's something I enjoy doing. So um, you know, I I think that's probably why the picture's there. I didn't even know it was on the online bio, but yeah, I'll I'll be out there and in the spring, I'll I'll help turn turn the field over. I do the same at baseball when they have doubleheaders or they're doing tournaments because I know as a coach in division three, we we don't have a field crew, like for the field crew, so you gotta you gotta get things turned over. So when I have opportunity to step in and do stuff like that, I gladly do that.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

That's good. So, coach uh Don and I kind of do our own homework on our guest. And what's funny is this was one of the few times that both of us had the same uh we noticed the same thing. Well, you know, obviously the bio is an easy, low-hanging fruit to go find information. But uh when we talked, it was like, hey, did you see that picture? Yeah, I saw the picture. I got a question, I got a question. You know, so that was that stuck out to both of us. So that I imagine your coaches noticed it because it did jump right off the page at us. But uh another very interesting thing in your bio, I thought, uh, were those yearly recaps of your athletic department. Uh, we've seen these in print from time to time, but yours is fully digital. It contains every piece of information from throughout the year. Uh it seemed like every piece of information. I looked through a couple of them. It's all digital. It's social media posts, team pictures, player graphics, highlight moments, top stories, team-by-team summaries, and so much more there. Uh, I think when I was looking at it, what what what hit me and what I believe is this is something that's very scalable. Uh, you can scale it up to a larger athletic department, uh, but as you mentioned, your division division three, but you also it's scalable down to our level at the high school level. And I think it'd be a great way to highlight our programs to our stakeholders. And and I, you know, I'm gonna look more about it at the end of the year, look back at yours. I love uh, and and what I love is uh how you title or theme each one of them. I don't know if you do that or if your associate AD does it, I don't know who does it, y'all do it collaboratively, it's very reflective. So talk about how y'all do this exercise and what it does for you to put a bow on the athletic year every year.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Well, I I think it's really important for people to understand. Um, so if you look, Coach Peoples has no social media presence, and that's purposeful. Um, but I understand the power of social media, and I understand the power of our website, and I understand how important it is for us to be outstanding at web broadcasting. So probably, you know, from one year to the next, 20 to 25 percent of the student athletes in our athletic department are gonna be from out of state. And those parents and those families and grandparents, they don't have the ability to to always come and and watch their kid or their grandchild compete. So it was really critically important that from how we cover our all of our athletic programs, that number one, parents and grandparents and and you know, family members, they need to be able to to follow and track, but the power of social media with our alumni, our other stakeholders, like they are bought in to what's happening here in Piedmont Athletics. Um and I have a staff that in athletic communications that is just tremendous. I I think we do some of the best work in Division III athletics from all that perspective. Um but those pieces and recaps are just a nice way, you know. Printed pieces right now cost so much money to produce. Um it cost a bunch of money to mail them. So we embrace the idea of like, let's digitize what we're doing, and we send those out to all of our alumni, all our friends and family, so that at the end of each semester, it's a nice way to recap what happened, um, highlight some of the really good stories and cool stories. And I think the young alumni especially they really appreciate it, but it's also in a format that older alumni can go through and they're getting exactly what they need. Um, so it it's and Joseph Garwood, who's our um assistant there in athletic communications, that's one of the things that Joseph has taken on, and he just does a tremendous job um with each of those pieces from one semester to the next. Um, so he does amazing work, and I think a lot of people probably would be surprised too that a lot of the images and different things are from students. We have an athletic communications um concentration in in our mass com area. So several years ago, because we saw the growth of this in college athletic departments and not many schools having that kind of concentration. So, kids in athletics, a lot of them want to stay in athletics. Well, these kids with different skill sets and talents, it's a way for them to kind of grow those skill sets and talents. So those kids help us do game management, do photography, do the web broadcast. Um, you name it, they're involved in all aspects of that, helping us with the different social media things. And now a lot of those kids are out leading other small college uh athletic communications areas. So it's pretty cool what we've accomplished working with the academic side of the house and letting these kids get real-world, real life, hands-on experience. So, a lot of that stuff is also created by our students and a lot of the student athletes who are part of that academic program.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah, that's really good. I think you bring up a great point that we've talked on here before about utilizing all of the tools that you have at your disposal. You're you are not in a silo. You are not just the athletic departments. You know, in a school, you have video production, you have uh sports marketing classes, you have these things. Go ahead and tap into them, right? Build relationships with those instructors and and and kind of they'll love it too, because they're looking for stuff to do too, right? So I think that that's really good. Now, you spent your first year as the director of athletics and as your last year coaching baseball, I believe. And I know that there's gonna be people that are listening to this who are in a very similar situation where they're wearing those two important but very different hats. Maybe talk about what you learned uh that has helped you go into this into the AD role, you know, hanging up the coaching role into the AD role, maybe what you've learned um and uh and maybe how that has shaped you as a as a leader, having to do both of those, because I mean that's pretty that's pretty tough when you got to fire yourself as a baseball coach.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Well, I I I think what I learned is that year went on, like if you if you talk to people who have worked with me, I am like I have to have things in order. I I'm a very strategic person and I'm a very analytical person. Um and I have processes. Well, the fall for me that year, the fall wasn't too bad. I'm like, all right, this isn't bad. I think I can navigate doing both jobs, and I you know, but the the fall also in college athletics for us, because we don't have football, is a little easier to navigate. So we have our soccer that are going on that's different from you know, high school soccer in Georgia that's played in the spring. Our soccer's played in the fall. We have volleyball that goes on, and then we have our kind of what I call our crossover sports. So men's and women's golf, men's and women's tennis, get a fall season and a spring season. Well, that was and cross country. So we're navigating those handful sports. So fall went good with baseball that year. Fall went good, kind of making sure I was doing what I needed to do from an administrative standpoint with all of our other programs. And then the spring hit, and I quickly realized I was not doing the job that I wanted to do as the head baseball coach, and I certainly wasn't doing the job that needed to be done as the director of athletics and serving all the programs here. And I I got to the end of that spring, and I went to our president, and I just told him, I said, listen, I am not comfortable doing something and not feeling like it's getting my best effort. And neither of these right now are getting what I think I'm capable of giving as a best effort. And I really told him, I'm like, I will step away because I feel like I need to from one of these, because they both deserve better. Um and he really at that point told me he felt like if I was ready, that he really wanted me to stay in this role as director of athletics. Um and I think what I figured out is especially during that time, that I always pulled into practice and game days. Like it was it was important to me to be a role model and be a mentor and be there for all those things outside of the baseball field. But I needed to be able to do that for our coaches, but I also needed to be able to do that for student athletes and our other athletic programs. Like I needed to be available to do the same things for them that I was. Doing for the kids on our baseball program. Um, and that's really again going back to being a servant leader, I needed to be able to free up enough time so that I could serve all those different folks in a way that they needed to be served. Um, and so that I'm I try to be very intentional about that right now. So that I don't know how people do it. Um I thought that I was capable of doing it, and I don't think I did a very good job that first year doing either one of the jobs very well.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

I agree with you 100%. These guys that do both uh coach and uh do AD role, uh more power to them. They're better than I am for sure. So I agree with you on that. Uh, coach, I think one thing is obvious looking at Piedmont Athletics over the last 10 to 15 years is the addition of several sports. Uh, y'all have added a couple in the last handful of years, I know, because I was buddies, coaching buddies with uh the first lacrosse coach. You added that about 15 years ago, I think, and uh one of the few colleges in Georgia to have lacrosse then and and now too. Uh, but you've added a lot more. Seems there has been a clear vision and mission to add opportunities at Piedmont through athletics. And the question is going to be more sitting around as a leader, how do you make sure you're continuously sharpening the vision you have for Piedmont Athletics? I know a lot of times people want to hear leaders talk about how vision is cast, how it's communicated, but we shy away from or forget about in the busyness of the job, how do you make time to ponder and whittle down on what you want that vision to be? Where do you find that margin?

SPEAKER_02 23:46

I mean, I think, you know, so let's talk specifically about the things that we've added. So what was becoming very apparent, one, we needed enrollment. So we needed an enrollment boost. I mean, I'm just gonna state what's obvious, and you can see this across a lot of small college athletic programs, whether they're division three, whether they're in AIA. Um people need the the the bull the boost in enrollment, so then they look at sports to add. For me, the key for me was what's going to give us the greatest return on investment. Um because now you have to put on the cap of being the the CFO in athletics, and there are some sports that cost an awful lot of money. Um, and the return on investment great. So we tried to look at what are things that we could do that wouldn't require a whole lot of investment to provide a quality student athlete experience. Um one of the things we always talked about here is if we're gonna do it, we're only gonna do it if we can be successful at it. We're not gonna start something if we can't be successful at it. Because at the end of the day, the best students from a division three perspective want to go participate in athletic programs where they have the chance to excel like they're excelling in the classroom. So that was an important aspect. We wanted to make sure that if we started something, we needed to be able to excel at it when we were competing. Um, the other part was can we effectively recruit? There are just some sports that as we were thinking through sports, gonna be a challenge to recruit kids because close by there weren't states that were playing some of those sports, and the challenge to bring kids into our part of the country to play a sport um was gonna be difficult. Um, so that's where we focused. Um, so one of the first things that we did, and and I'm hoping that we will get this. Um we're like we we can go all in on track and field. Um we were being really successful across country. The coach that we have, um Jeff Jenkins was doing a fabulous job with that program. And we're like, you know what, we really feel like we can be a real good Division III track and field program. Now, the the thing that we have struggled with is finding a place where we can actually build a track and field facility. So this current coaching staff and what they've accomplished without our own facility. So we share um with the middle school here in Haversham, one of the middle schools and the high school. So our coaches are our our sprints coach is going to be one place, our distance folks are gonna be at another place, our throws coach is gonna be at another place, and how we've accomplished what we've accomplished in track and field is nothing short of amazing. But the state of Georgia has amazing high school track and field. Um, so we knew we could recruit the area well, we knew the states that surrounded us would give us opportunity to bring really good track and field student athletes in here. And I really believe if if we can get our own facility built, be one of the best in Division III from a track and field perspective. Um, the next thing that we added here recently was swimming. And and again, high school swimming in Georgia, it's hard to name a big school in the Atlanta Metro that doesn't have swimming. Um, and then the amount of club swimming that goes on in this area is pretty amazing. Um, and the kind of coaching that is in this area, there's lots of former Olympians that live in the Atlanta Metro. Um, so we're like swimming seems like a natural fit. Again, a sport with really high-achieving student athletes in the classroom as well as in their sport. Um, so we have an agreement here with the local aquatic center for a small county like Haversham to have this beautiful aquatic center that we have that's about five minutes from our campus. We're like, we can leverage that. We don't have to build our own facility to leverage this. We already had an agreement that's been ongoing since that facility opened in the community, and then it was just navigating how that would work with the high schools in the area. Um then the key always is can you hire the right person? And we were able to lure a guy away that's got so many years of experience, and and the thing that was most appealing about hiring Coach Geyer is he started the program at Warren Wilson, he started the program at Mars Hill. This guy knew what it took to start a program from scratch, and I didn't know if he'd be willing to leave Mars Hill, um, but we had some connection with some local kids here that uh my youngest daughter swam competitively with um through high school, and um a few of those so I built a little bit of a connection with Teddy, and you know, I think it it just worked out. I'm gonna call that one a good God thing. Um, but you know, a year ago in the fourth year of the program, we had 50 kids in our swim program, which is just amazing to start that from scratch, and then in four years, when we have our first graduating class, that this guy built the program to 50 student athletes. Right um, and then I did something then a few years ago, and again, I I'm gonna lean into experience. So my daughter was a gymnast, got beat up, banged up, like a lot of gymnasts do that do gymnastics at a young age, and then kind of went into competitive cheer. Um, so I was I was a competition cheer dad in the fall. All kinds of competition cheer competitions, and all the high schools again in Georgia, they have it. Like, so Friday night you got the football game, Saturdays you're going to cheer competitions. Um so I'm like, I feel like we could start a competition cheer team here and it will go gangbusters because not a lot of schools have it. Um, we also had a really national championship winning team when I was at Methodist, and I will tell you there were many times during my time at Methodist that students would come to watch our chair team perform what they were going to perform at the national championship at halftime. Like we packed the gym because at halftime they'd want to see what the cheer team was doing. So I'm like, I think this would work here. I feel confident that we can recruit competition cheer kids. And I think people, some of my coaches thought I'd lost my mind, but in the first year, Kristen recruited almost 30 new students to Piedmont. Um, she has close to 40 right now between our kids that do sideline cheer and then her competition team. So it it's just, and again, high achieving students, um, great return on investment, and kids that want to compete also at a high level. So they've been very successful the first two years going to the the national cheer championships for college. Um, so those things have all worked out, but again, it goes back to if we're gonna start something, we want to be able to be successful at it. But most importantly, we want to recruit quality student athletes, kids have been able to do.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Yeah, coach, I I think you bring up a really good point. This idea of we've talked about hiring on here a lot, right? And and trying to get that right. And I don't think anybody's gonna ever fully figure that out. But what I hear you saying is it's not always the the bright, shiny thing, it is the thing that is best for you at that time. And I think that if if more people looked at it that way, they probably find more success in hiring the people that are best for them right now. Uh, think you'd agree with that.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

No, I absolutely and I and I think the biggest thing since I've taken over, and and I learned this from Coach Zeke, who was RAD while I was the head baseball coach here for several years. It's so critical to hire people who fit, like who fit your fit what you're trying to do departmentally. Um there's a lot of people I can tell you with a lot of the searches that we've done that maybe look better on paper, the resume looks better, but you spend a little time with them and you and you you communicate with them, and you're like, they're just not the right fit. They don't fit what we're trying to do. And I think when you look at our coaching staff all the way through the assistant coaches, our head coaches also recognize the importance of bringing people who fit the culture, fit what we're trying to do in our athletic department. So it's it's always about the fit and not what's shiny and bright, and who's got the the flashiest, coolest resume. Um, and that's work for us.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Yeah, I I think that's really good stuff. And you got into weeds for us to help us like be able to do what you do vision-wise for sure, because you gave us all the components that I imagine are in a strategic plan. If y'all have a strategic plan, or at least as I'm listening to you, I mean it seems like category, category, category, category. And if I'm out there as a high school AD or as another athletic leader or business leader, whatever, we hear that word strategic plan, but sometimes we don't know what it is. You just gave us what a strategic plan could consist of. You know, maybe if you're not gonna a business is not gonna have enrollment, but it's gonna have customers, right? You're always gonna have employees, uh, you're gonna have facility resource management. So that's really good to see how your vision ties to uh a strategic plan that obviously we don't really have time to get into your strategic plan or if you have one or whatever, but you just gave us the the weeds of what it would look like. So that's uh that's really good. I think we can take that and put together a strategic plan if we don't have one. That's that's uh really appreciate you giving us some tangible information there. That's uh it's better than the sometimes the 30,000 viewpoint uh uh overview there. So that's good. So hey coach, I got a question that we get asked a lot. Uh just had it uh a little while ago. Had a student, college student, come back, and uh he and we've had male and females come back from and in the sports management degree program. Uh, maybe you're playing somewhere else. This last student was Kinsas State, I believe. And it's a simple question, and they kind of always lead with this. So I want to ask it to you and just get you to leave with it uh or answer it from a from a college level. What is the best part for you of being an athletic administrator? Why should others sign on and and go all in in athletic administration?

SPEAKER_02 36:05

Well, my uh my answer may be different from how others answer it, but the greatest reward that I get um from serving in this role is having the ability to watch a young person come to our campus as a freshman and then watch their growth in the classroom, on the athletic fields, and watch what they become as a young person that hopefully we've launched out into the real world successfully. Um so you know, we try to be really intentional here. But one of the things that I I love to do is we uh I'm I I love leadership and teaching leadership. Got to be a part of a training several years ago with the NCAA and had just some unbelievable facilitators. And my my takeaway from that training was today a lot of young people are told that the sport that they play, the skill set that they have, the the things that are most important about them idea, and I'm gonna get into a little bit of my faith that God's gifted them all really uniquely. And I I you know, people go, are leaders built, or are they born? I think we're all born with leadership abilities. Um, but being a part of this NCA training that I got to go through, they exposed us to some tools that identify your leadership qualities and your skills. So we always lead a leadership training and we meet once a week in the evenings with the the kids that the coaches see as being future leaders in their program. So they're usually freshmen and sophomores. And what we really try to do is help them identify how they are gifted in leadership and then how can they leverage then those skill sets to be a good leader in their program on campus, um, and how they execute that. So for me, doing those things that is the joy that I get from being in this role. Um, and I tell people the needs you said it, I'm about to start my second decade doing this. I I tell people on campus from coaching and now in this role, I think every four or five years there's a cultural shift, and young people need something different from us as people who are leading them. Um, they need us to support them in a different way, and you have to be able to continue evolving and adapting and figuring out what it is so that you can best serve them and support them. Um, so you know, Coach Fusco instilled in me this passion for learning, and he the best advice he ever gave me was he told me, if you ever think you have all the answers and you've got it all figured out, he's like, that's the minute you should quit coaching because that's the minute you no longer become effective to the young people that you're leading. Right. And I've held on to that also as an athletic director. Like, I just coach instilled a passion for learning. So I want to learn about what is happening. What are what are psychologists and people that are seeing with this age group, what are the things that they need now? Um so that we can best serve them and support them. So it's that joy, guys, of watching them as freshmen and watching the young people that they become as we launch them four years later into the real world. Um that's what's so cool when knowing that you've in some way hopefully had an impact on watching them grow and even develop as as people.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

That's good. So you've been at Piedmont for uh if my math's right, like 25 years, right? Something like that. Sneaking up on that. Yeah, there you go. You were you were an AD and coach before that. So yeah, I was gonna ask how you've grown in your first decade as a director of athletics, but you you had prior experience to Piedmont. So what have you learned about yourself and what have you been able to do lean into to make you a better leader over time?

SPEAKER_02 40:43

I I I think, and I wish I would have figured this out earlier as a head coach, but being intentional every day um to not miss when somebody has a need. Um and today you you guys know this. Um it is challenging for a young person to reach out for help. Like they're they're afraid to do that. They're they're afraid to just ask for help. So it's just being really observant, um and trying to identify because I feel like, and I tell our coaches this all the time, I feel like every day there's probably a young person, maybe more, that they really need you to lean into them and they're afraid to ask. And if you're intentional about it, you'll pick up on it, and you won't miss the opportunity that that God's providing you. So I I told you I'm a planner, and my planning sometimes got me caught up in trying to plan so many days ahead and being ahead of the game. And I forgot the importance of man, I have to be intentional in the day God's given me to meet the needs of the people around me. So I think that's the thing that I hopefully do a lot better today than I did as a head coach. Um that just that intentionality, like paying attention to your coaches, paying attention to your assistant coaches, paying attention to the kids, um, and knowing when they need help and they're afraid to ask, and just get the conversation going so that you can help them and support them.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

That's really good. And and let me kind of, I want to kind of flip that conversation a little bit. You talked about this cultural shift and and supporting in a different way from a leadership perspective, from a coach perspective. As we look at the ever-changing landscape of collegiate athletics and the typical trickle-down effects to the high school level, what can we do to ensure that when student athletes arrive at your place, that they're ready? And I think that is the big the biggest success that we can have as they come back and they tell us that they were ready for it. We've talked about that on here before. Um, we've asked that question to several in the collegiate space on this podcast, but I would imagine the answer has changed somewhat over the last few years with the transfer portal, with NIML shifting the landscape as it has. What are maybe those top three skills that a graduating high school senior needs to develop before they make that jump to the next level today?

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Well, I here I'll I'm gonna get on my soapbox a little bit. This is the thing, Don and Josh, that that I see most of all right now. Um and it it terrifies me what the impact is gonna be in the next three to five years. But so many of these young people come and their whole identity is wrapped up in the sport today. Specialization. Playboard. And we're gonna play it from the time. I mean, I've got people asking my 10-year-old grandson to play travel baseball, and I and I tell my daughter, I'm like, he's absolutely not playing travel baseball. Let him play football, he loves it, let him play basketball, he loves it. Like, let him do it all. He doesn't like it's it's crazy what we're doing to young people. So what we see now is young kids get to campus, and I'm just gonna call it for what it is. They've been lied to, their parents have been lied to. They're told that they're better than they really are, they're told their ability is higher than what it really is. Church has been eliminated in many ways because they're traveling and playing so much, there's no time to fit in church on Sunday. Um, so then they walk on their college campus, and now because we've had the COVID eligibility and all these things, like teams are older. You know what? A 21, 22-year-old grown man is more prepared to play any sport than a 17, 18-year-old young man. So they walk on your campus and they go, holy crap, I'm not as good as what everybody has told me that I am. There's a quick realization that I'm not really prepared physically. Well, how can you be? You've played travel sports and maybe played with your high school team. I know that's going away from us where travel is more important than playing with your buddies and playing high school and having a chance to win a state championship. And so then they have no place to turn. I think the other thing that has happened, they're allowed to fail. So if they're not good enough for the travel team, they're on, they just go to another travel team. If they're not good enough to compete at the high school that they're at, mom and dad will move them to another high school. So they have no skills of resiliency of any kind. Um, so they're not as good as what they've been told, so now reality steps in. And usually a college coach today, I feel like, is one of the first people to tell them the truth about their ability. So that's hard to swallow because nobody's told them that. And then because they've never failed, and they're failing probably at a level that they don't know how to deal with, they don't know how to turn that failure into success. So what we see a lot is they quit and they walk away. Um because we've also made it okay in our society that that quitting is okay. Like they're I'm sure you guys can think about I know how my started something in our family, you finished it. Quitting, quitting that was not even a word we used. That was not in our vocabulary. So I don't know because I feel like college coaches, college administrators, I don't know how you guys do what you do because I feel like your hands are tied severely, um, and even being able to communicate the truth to a young person. Um and I've got a lot of our former players who are coaching high school baseball, and I hear an illustration about how travel sports are impacting what is happening, and it I don't know how we turn it around, but I think we've lost the idea of what youth sports should be about in our country. And when parents ask me, I always tell them this, I'm like, look at the NFL draft, look at the baseball draft. 80% of the people taken in the first two rounds, guess what they were? Multi-sport athletes, they didn't specialize. So this whole idea that you need to specialize is just insanity to me. Um, so that's my soapbox. You probably didn't know I would get up on it, but it frustrates me because we're we're destroying the mental health of young people with what is happening with youth sport right now.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Now, here's the deal. I we've asked that question, uh, you know, I think when we when Josh looked at the questions, he goes, I knew that you were gonna ask that question because just about every college person that we talk to, we asked that question, or I asked that question, that's the best answer that we have been given on that question. So I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Yeah, I think y'all have a um y'all have a different uh ability, right? You have the scholarship you're giving away. If they don't want it, or if they don't want to hear what you say to them and tell them about their ability level, then they leave, but you still have the scholarship, right? In in some form or fashion. Different at high school because they're paying booster club fees and stuff like that. Definitely different in travel ball because they're paying some travel ball coach or some tutor, that person, and we've said this forever, that person is never gonna tell them they're bad because that person wants to keep getting paid. And it's a it's a revenue stream, right? Uh, we have different, different connections at the high school that probably slow us down from being completely transparent and honest to a kid. But uh yeah, you make a great point there. That's a great answer. Uh, and and we'll we're gonna try to uh pass that on. I know there's other podcasts and books and stuff out there people can listen to or read about what it takes to be successful at Charles level, and we we need to read and we need to be up to date on that so we can help our kids. And it may mean we have to be tougher on them. And if we if we do, we'll try to do that in a loving, caring way, but help them prepare to where they want to go.

SPEAKER_02 50:06

So well, uh what I would say, um, because people ask me from time to time to come like speak to booster clubs and parent groups, and my message always to the parents is it's okay for your kid to fail. Right, like that's where learning happens. Learning doesn't start happening until somebody has failed. Um and I think people forget Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team. Um the twins gave up on David Ortiz because he couldn't hit home runs as a Minnesota twin. They they let him go. The Red Sox took a flyer on Big Poppy, and it it worked out, but today we just don't let young people fail. Like that's where all the learning and growing happens, like and and let them navigate their way through that. Um I always wanted our guys to know, like, look, we're gonna fail and let's fail in practice and we'll figure it out so that we're not failing in games, but you gotta give them the freedom and the space to fail. Like, you gotta um and you gotta make it challenging enough so they do fail. But I I I think that's always my message to parents. It is okay to let them fail. It it doesn't mean they're bad, it doesn't mean anything, but you guys know as you climb levels, there's gonna be there's gonna be failure involved till you take yourself to the next level and standards.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

There's always a bigger bear, I can assure you.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Always.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

That's good. All right, coach, one more question before we get into our two-minute drill to end in the uh episode. Uh, this year we're asking each guest to respond to the following statement that I took from a book called The Five Graces of Life in Leadership by Gary Burnison. Uh it's a neat little book called The Five Graces there. Uh, the statement is this really short leadership statement. So here it is. Leadership. It starts with a leader, but it's not about the leader. How do you respond to that?

SPEAKER_02 52:22

Well, great leaders, it's about the people that they're leading, right? Um one of my favorite books um is a book by Simon Sinek, The Leader Eats Last. It's all about the people that you're leading and how you're pouring into them to make them better. 100%. But that's how Christ led. Just get into the gospels like that was the kind of leader that Jesus was.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Good. Great way to end it. Great, uh, great summary there. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. Uh great book reference for folks who want to uh add to their book list and learning tools, uh, and just a great example of leadership. So uh we appreciate it, coach. Thanks for sharing uh a lot of the experience you've had. Thanks for getting in the weeds and making this tangible stuff that we can take back with us, take home with us, and uh put into practice immediately as we improve our athletic department. So we appreciate that. Piedmont College, great leader right there. Uh go look it up. He's got some good stuff online uh there uh in his bio and stuff you can really apply. So, Coach Peoples, thanks for thanks for the conversation today. Now we finish our comment, we finish our episode with what we call the two-minute drill. You got to go back to your football days here, uh, and Don kind of leads us through this, but we're gonna get to know you a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Okay, coach, we're gonna hit you with some rapid fire questions. You just tell us the first thing that comes to your mind, okay? Okay. What was the first job you ever had ever in your life?

SPEAKER_02 54:02

I worked at a golf course.

unknown 54:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

So I worked on a golf course.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

Our A Mowan Greens there. You got how about that? All right. Who in your life most frequently gives you unsolicited advice?

SPEAKER_02 54:19

Well, that was my mom until she passed. Um, she loved baseball and she came to all the games she lived here with us at the end. Um, probably our our associate AD, Jamie Purdy, and she gives it to me straight, and I I appreciate that a whole lot about her. Um, she doesn't pull any punches.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

That's good. That's good to have those people around you. Now, the we're gonna play a little game of hot or not. Okay, so that these are things that in your opinion, they're a hot take or they're not. Okay, so a hot take, so it's an unpopular opinion that you feel strongly about. Okay. So first hot or not. Burgers are better than hot dogs at a barbecue. Is that a is that a hot take?

SPEAKER_02 55:12

Yeah. So I'm agreeing that burgers are better than hot dogs?

SPEAKER_00 55:16

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Yes, I I would say that.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

All right, all right, next one. Pineapple belongs on pizza.

SPEAKER_02 55:25

No.

SPEAKER_00 55:26

Not all right, hot or not, eating dessert before dinner.

SPEAKER_02 55:34

No, no, not.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

Alright, last one, last hot or not. Reality TV is better than scripted shows.

SPEAKER_02 55:47

Um it just depends on which ones you're watching. I watch all the shows in Alaska, so I like Gold Rush and stuff like that. So I I their problem-solving abilities out in the bush just amaze me.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

So that's probably a hot take for you.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

Yeah, it's not, but if it's like the real housewives, then I'm not down with that anything for me.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

There, I think go away with the real housewives right there.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

Yep. All right, good deal. All right, so uh moving on. So, what wasn't taught to you in school that you wish would have been?

SPEAKER_02 56:29

Um, I think when I grew up, and I'm gonna say it was parents and teachers, they taught us the concept of hard work, but working smart and working intelligently, I think I had to figure that out on my own, but I think it's because of my age and the people that I was surrounded by. So um I I grasp the concept of hard work. I don't think I grasp working intelligently and working smart.

SPEAKER_01 57:02

That's a good one. I agree with that. Alright, if you're going to be an elite leader, what things can't bother you?

SPEAKER_02 57:13

Uh other people's opinions of you. I I think too many people get caught up in their feelings. Um and what when you're in a leadership role, you're gonna have critics. I mean, that just comes with the territory, so you can't get all into your feelings when people are being critical, because if you take the that correctly, because we're we're trying to all provide constructive criticism to student athletes, hopefully what that makes you do is do a deeper dive in what they're being critical about to see, geez, is there's something that I can improve about that. So I I just think, yeah, you can't be overly sensitive to to negativity or or criticism.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

Good deal. Uh, what was the first vehicle you ever owned, ever?

SPEAKER_02 58:05

I had a four-door Chevy citation that I paid for half, and my mom was kind enough to pay for half. There you go. Had a little hatchback, could lay the back seat. Pretty good little car.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

Good. All right, let's finish with this. That's our trademark question. Today, Coach Jim Peoples, you've been hanging with the ADs, but let's say you could hang out with anyone. Who would that be and why?

SPEAKER_02 58:34

Uh wow. Well, I I'll go back to because I hadn't had a chance to do it. It would be great to spend more time with my college football coach. Um, I lost my father um to cancer when I was 13, and coach became that father figure male role model to me. Any chance that I get to to spend any time with them. Um coach is struggling with Parkinson's right now, and he's in a nursing home, but his mind is so sharp. And you know, Laura and I were there with he and his wife um here a few months ago, and we probably spent two hours, and just the things that he was pouring into me for those two hours were pretty amazing. So I just hanging out with Coach and spending time with him. Um, he was a master teacher.

SPEAKER_00 59:30

Um so great answer. Great answer, Coach. Thank you so much for the time today. We love learning from our counterparts at the collegiate level. Uh, you've helped us and our listeners get better. So thanks for the time.

SPEAKER_02 59:42

Guys, thank you again for the invitation. This was a lot of fun, so appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

It was great to be joined by an old friend from the baseball world, Coach Jim Peoples, the director of athletics at Piedmont College in Denver, Georgia. Coach, thanks for joining us today. We appreciate your time. Thanks for sharing the lessons you have learned through uh 25 years in high school athletic administration. Thank you so much for that. Um, thank you for the wisdom and experiences there that we learned today through our questions. And, you know, for me, it was something I wrote down early as Coach was talking about his career and who all he was around. How about all the Hall of Famers? Every name he mentioned seemed like a Hall of Famer. And it's really special when you get to sit down with people who have spent an entire career learning from and being in the presence of Hall of Fame coaches and leaders in athletic administration. And that's Coach People's career right there. He's a Hall of Famer probably one day, if not already. And he's been around Hall of Famers because that's who he's learned from. So wow, what a what a time to be around so many great leaders and people to learn from. But also talking about vision and how he turned that into a strategic planning conversation and gave us some real tangible, real-world application to have a strategic plan, to deliver a vision for your athletic department. I love that the part. And then at the end, him just talking about failure, the power of failure. That's where learning happens, and we have to create those opportunities for our athletes and even for the people who uh lead lead around us. Uh, we have to allow them to fail, try hard and fail, and learn from failing, because that is, as he said, where learning happens. Coach, thanks. Uh thanks for talking, telling us about what great leadership looks like and for helping us get better today. We appreciate you, Coach Peoples. Thanks for joining us, and thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to this podcast from an athletic director at the Division III level. We uh we believe there's some great nuggets of wisdom here. And and once again, we'd ask that before you hit pause or move on to your next podcast, if you would just uh leave us a rating or review uh so other people can see what you think of our podcast. And we appreciate you listening. And as always, thanks for spending your time hanging with the ADs.