Navy Sports Central
What if I told you about a group of elite college athletes who compete in 36 different sports at one of the toughest institutions in the nation. For them, it’s not about name, image, and likeness or any other kind of major endorsement deal. Because at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to serve their country. These young men and women represent the best our country has to offer. They compete at a high level on both the national and world stage, and their stories have mostly gone untold. I’m here to change all of that.
With Navy Sports Central, you'll get the latest news on the athletes, and their teams, gain some unique insights in our Deep Dive segment and hear from some great guests along the way.
So please join me, Karl Darden, and check out Navy Sports Central wherever you get your podcasts to learn more about these incredible athletes and our nation’s future leaders.
Navy Sports Central
Gear Up! A Deep Dive into the Triathlon World With Navy Coach Billy Edwards
The fall sports season is just cranking up, and we'll be joined by Billy Edwards, the head coach of Navy's newest varsity sport, the Women's Triathlon.
Coach Edwards discusses his athletic career at Annapolis and how he first became exposed to the triathlon. He also shares his personal experience as a professional triathlete and how that helped him establish a highly competitive club program.
With the Women's Triathlon being elevated to varsity status, Coach Edwards and his team are entering new territory. Not only will you learn how the triathlon differs from other college sports, but you will also see how its evolution is already redirecting recruiting efforts.
From the rigorous training cycles leading up to the NCAA championships to the skill sets of each athlete on his team, Coach Edwards provides an in depth look into a sport that is still largely unknown to many of us. So, gear up for this immersive journey into the triathlon world. It's a race you won't want to miss.
Related Links:
- Women's Triathlon Becomes the 36th Varsity Sport at the Naval Academy
- Coach Billy Edwards Biography
- Quilty Named First Team Captain of Women's Triathlon
We want to hear from you! Give us your answer to our Question of the Day. Here is the one for this episode:
Navy Women’s Triathlon coach Billy Edwards is a Naval Academy graduate (Class of 2000). How many other sports at Annapolis have a Navy grad as part of their coaching staff? Is it
A. 5
B. 6
C. 8
D.9
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- Seven In Music (Intro)
- Alexiaction (Deep Dive)
- Loka Music (Deep Dive Pt. 2 Lead In)
- Artlss (Question of the Day Lead In)
- Cinematic Alex (Closeout Music)
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Hi everybody, my name is Karl Darden and I'd like to welcome and thank all of you for joining us today on Navy Sports Central. I'm your host and this is the official podcast of the Navy Sports Nation, where we take a deeper dive into Navy Sports. August is winding down in Annapolis, which means that the fall sports are just now starting to crank up. The women's soccer team already has several games in the books. The men won their home opener against VMI and the volleyball team won two out of three matches in their first invitation of the year. And even though the football team had a very tough day, navy still won the weekend against Notre Dame, thanks to the men's rugby team. We've got all that, plus our deep dive segment and question of the day, so don't go anywhere. The 2023-24 sports season is finally here. Alright, welcome back to the start of what promises to be another exciting sports season at Navy. Whether this is the first time you're checking us out or you're a regular listener, thanks for taking the time.
Karl:Let's go ahead and get our sports update started with the women's soccer team. The Mids won their first game of the year and followed that up with three hard fought draws, one of which was against the University of Maryland, and in that game senior goalkeeper Maddie Gallagher came up huge. At the end she turned away two big shots within the last couple of minutes to preserve a three to three draw Over. On the men's side, david Jackson's two penalty kicks gave the Mids a three nil shutout over VMI in their home opener, and they've got two more games at home over the Labor Day weekend against Howard and Liberty. Now let's jump indoors and see what's going on with the women's volleyball team. They competed in the University of Albany Invitational over the weekend and came out of it winning two out of three matches. Both of the wins were sweeps over Syracuse and Albany. Senior Jamie Llewellyn had 17 kills against the host team, and her sister Jordan came through with eight more In a match where the Mids were pretty much in control the whole time.
Karl:Of course, most of the attention this weekend was focused on Dublin, ireland, where the football team opened their season against 13th ranked Notre Dame. Now, if you saw the game, you know it wasn't anything to write home about, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time picking it apart, but the fact is, no one should have been all that surprised. Now, don't get me wrong. I think the Mids will learn from that game, put it in the rearview mirror and go on to have a solid season. But I have to tell you that I'm not a big fan of these Navy Notre Dame games that are played in Ireland. I don't have anything against the country In fact I'd love to visit it one of these days but my problem is that the only time to schedule a game like this is at the very beginning of the year, and that means that the nationally ranked Irish had the entire preseason to prepare for a Navy offense. That, in this particular case, doesn't have all the kinks worked out yet, and it showed.
Karl:I do think that Mids will be able to move the ball against most teams as they get more into their schedule, but they really had no chance at all against a Notre Dame team that has designs on getting to the college football playoff, especially since they have a quarterback who's the same age now as Patrick Mahomes was when he won his first Super Bowl. That's right. This guy, sam Hartman, is a graduate transfer from Wake Forest who used every eligibility rule available to him because of COVID so that he could suit up as a college football player at 24 years old. He dominated the game and I would expect him to, since he's taken over 3500 snaps as the Division 1 quarterback. When NBC flashed up that statistic, I just couldn't believe it. Anyway, I think the next three games will be a better indicator of Navy's potential this year. So they need to focus on the future.
Karl:The good news is that, despite the lopsided loss, the defending national champion men's rugby team pounded the Irish by a score of 78 to nothing. The Mids scored early and often building a 42-nothing lead by halftime, and they were pretty much on cruise control the rest of the afternoon as they tacked on 36 more points. So if you look at the weekend from a combined scoring standpoint, navy came out on top 81 to 42. Maybe that's a bit over the top when it comes to positive spin, but you guys should know by now that I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to Navy sports and that's never going to change. Alright, that does it for our sports update. Stick around, because our deep dive segment is next.
Karl:Okay, it is time for our deep dive segment here on Navy Sports Central, and today we're going to be focusing on the newest varsity sport at the academy, that being the women's triathlon. The triathlon has actually been a co-ed sport at Annapolis since the early 1990s and it has been an emerging sport for women in particular on the college scene ever since. The support that has built over the last several years led to the announcement on March 1st so you're looking at basically six months ago that the women's triathlon has been added as the 36th varsity sport at Navy and, by the way, that ties Stanford and Ohio State for the most. In Division I the team will have the same coach who has led the club program for the past 15 seasons. He is a Naval Academy graduate himself who was a professional triathlete for five years. He qualified for the Ironman World Championships twice as an amateur and twice as a professional, and he's competed in endurance races all over the world.
Karl:So I am very happy to welcome the coach of the women's triathlon team, billy Edwards, to the podcast. Coach Edwards, it is so great to have you here on Navy Sports Central. I really appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time.
Coach Edwards:Awesome. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's a new varsity sport, great opportunity to talk to your audience and the alums about this.
Karl:Yeah, and we'll definitely get into that because, as we spoke about in our you know before we came on the air here, there's a little bit of similarity between this newest varsity sport at Navy and the one that came on board right before, which is rugby. So looking forward to getting your thoughts on that. But anyway, for those of you in the audience who don't know, coach Edwards is an Academy grad class of 2000,. Right, is that correct? 2000. All right, good deal. And you ran cross country and track when you were at the Academy and I was just curious as to which distances you specialized in and which ones are your favorites.
Coach Edwards:Well, I went to Navy to run cross country and track as a walk on. I met actually didn't have a full on recruiting visit. I ended up getting an opportunity to be a drag with a bunch of guys that were on the team. It was my intent to run but I walked on and when it became time for like indoor, outdoor track, I thought I would end up being like a 5K 10 gig guy because I did a lot of longer stuff in high school and then I ended up gravitating to the middle distance because there was a lot more opportunity for this walk on to race. So I just made myself a utility guy and I raced a lot of middle distance just because it gave me a lot more opportunity to race.
Coach Edwards:And I think I enjoyed the 1000 because it was just a gut. It raced where you had to go fast and gut it out. I got to develop my speed at a young age, which was probably better than me continue to do longer distance and I think I even had fun. One year I was I paced out a sub four minute mile Like we had 800 or 1000 folks in Halsey Fieldhouse pushed up onto the track. It was. It was fun to just like run with people all the way up on lane three. I wasn't running for myself, right, comically, I was just awesome trying to bring this guy around in sub 32nd 200s in Halsey Fieldhouse. It was super fun, so I enjoyed being a part of the team and just trying to race as much as I could.
Karl:OK, all right, good deal. So when did you first become interested in competing in a triathlon? And I was wondering if you could just kind of from the time that you came to that, from the time you came to making that commitment, say, hey, I want to do this right up until the time you finished your, your first one. If you could just kind of walk us through that, just the highlights of that.
Coach Edwards:Well, I'm a child of the of the 80s and the ABC wide world of sports and I loved watching like some of those odd things like race across America was on there, which I actually did as a team eventually, and the Ironman triathlon, and so I was intrigued every fall to watch the replays of the Ironman track on and so I watched that and that's was like when I was a child and I wore like neon shorts, when I was like a little kid runner and I wanted to be Mark Allen and Dave Scott, who are legends of the sport, and then that all kind of pushed aside because all I wanted to do is run. I want to run. In high school I wanted to compete at the highest levels and I was never great, but I just keep like kept plugging away until 11 seasons into being at the Naval Academy. I was just fried from running. I had burnt out, I was done. I could. I was not ready to run, I couldn't. You know I was running great workouts but I every time when the gun would go off, I just didn't want to do it.
Coach Edwards:I needed something new and I started to go like I bought a bike and I started doing triathlon and I was not a great swimmer. The first race I came out of the water so far back I had struggled to take my wetsuit off. I think something happened to my brakes on my bike during the bike leg and I was on this fancy bike and I had I literally had a grandma go by me and I said Grandma, older women go by me and she goes, keep it. She's like keep it up. And I'm like my bike won't go fast. And then I got off the bike and ran like 16 minutes for a five gauges, blazing everybody but finishing so far back. So my first race was 10 in, 10 plus years after my first like ideas of doing a trap on. But I was hooked right away just because of it spoke to my things that I wanted to do. It had running in it, so I had what's good at something in it and I enjoyed the challenge.
Karl:Right, right, okay, by the way, a quick funny story for you. When when I first heard about a triathlon I believe the very first Ironman, I believe was in 78. But I had not heard about the event until probably, I'm going to say, mid 80s. I think I was still in flight school and we were like playing basketball or something like that, and I don't even know who it was, but it was a classmate of mine. I remember that clearly.
Karl:They came up and they said hey, I just saw the weirdest, the craziest thing on Wide World of sports. It was like this event called a triathlon, where these competitors swim 2.4 miles, then they jump on a bike and ride 112 miles and then they go run a marathon and I go wait, all in the same day? And they go. Yeah, they said you are lying to me. Nobody would put themselves through that kind of crazy test, you know. And of course he wasn't.
Karl:And I ended up going through the channels like a couple years later and I happened to flip onto the channel right when they were doing the replay of it and it was the most dramatic thing I'd ever seen in terms of just how they captured the video and they put the sound to it and the guy that was narrating it and the athletes, of course, like you'd mentioned, your Mark Allen were some of the greatest around. But yeah, and from that point on, I mean I don't know quite as much anymore. But from that point on, there's a stretch from about like 10 years in a row where, okay, this is about the time that Iron Man's supposed to be televised and I would like watch it just because of that. So, yeah, pretty wild.
Coach Edwards:I mean, it was appointment viewing for my friends when I did the race several weeks later. We would all like schedule to have a party and we would like drink beers and have a barbecue and watch it, even though some of us had been at the race. But, yeah, it was super fun to watch, just because I mean, and you watch till the end and you're like I'm not crying, no, I'm not crying.
Karl:No, are you crying? No, I'm not crying.
Coach Edwards:You're like watching this race because you would watch these people finishing it and for what's worth, that was like that was intriguing to me, like wow, this, that is so hard. I want to, I want to figure out why, like I want to experience that aspect of the sport was like it's got to be so hard. I just want to finish one. That was my first thing. I just, I just want to finish it.
Karl:Right, right. So to that point. On the subject of mental toughness here, right, I think when you talk about a triathlete, there's got to be just a level of mental toughness that it just so different than some of the other sports. And I was wondering if you could kind of speak to that a little bit in terms of what did you do to develop that? Or is it in fact to a certain level innate in all athletes and then just needs to be developed a little bit?
Coach Edwards:I mean it's interesting as a coach and as a I don't know as an athlete, like I think there's a bit of it that's an innate in some of its exposure. So I think the innate side is it's probably in you, it's in me, but it's also exposure to opportunities, like when I was a young kid, my dad, my dad, like do you want to go run a 5k? And I was like nine years old, my friends weren't running a 5k at like nine years old and I was like sure, an opportunity to go hang out with my dad and run. You know, like down the line I went up to like a bike ride and like it was like a hundred, it was a hundred and twenty mile ride. I got lost and it ended up turning into a hundred and fifty six mile ride. But when I got lost and got back on course it wasn't like, oh, I'm going to drop out, it was a okay, I just tacked 30 miles onto this ride. So some of its exposure at a younger age. To that end I have a lot of athletes that are exposed to different sides of not extreme or longer endurance sports. Like ladies are like one of my ladies is not like, as a kid, one another one of my athletes her dad does a lot of ultra races, so they're exposed to this and the fact that, like you know, they know the hate.
Coach Edwards:As a human, as a person, I'm meant to move and I can challenge myself and push myself and try to find different limits of physical capability. And then, as a coach, when I get to work with these athletes, it's presenting those opportunities. Like we'll do, you know, at some point during the year we'll do, like a hundred mile bike ride. Our race distance at the club level was 25 miles and at the NCAA level it's 12 and a half miles. But and so a hundred miles, like what's the point of that? Well, it's pushing yourself, finding those limits and you know, at that point you're like, oh, when I race 12 and a half miles, you know super fast, it's not on the bike for five or six hours. So it's, you know, it's people have been able to push their limits and so figuring out different ways to push people's limits, presenting a workout and then tacking on a surprise at the end, stuff like that. You know, having people push and then figure out, oh, now what do I do?
Karl:Right, right, okay, so we already spoke that you came from a running background and I was kind of curious when you look at the athletes that that end up competing in a triathlon, is there a pretty good mix from where their heaviest experience is? In other words, are most of them runners, are most of them cyclists, are most of them swimmers, or is it a good mix between all three?
Coach Edwards:Well, admittedly it's. It's mostly swimmers and runners, I think cycling is not is not being exposed as much. There definitely are. Like I said, there are folks that definitely come with head opportunities to go ride bikes with their parents, so they rode mountain bikes. From time to time we get athletes that did do some road racing, but most of them come. Most of the athletes that I work with, whether at the club level for the last 15 years or now the team that I currently am working with. A lot of them are coming for I would say it's kind of different with the club athletes.
Coach Edwards:I was bringing on a lot of runners and swimmers and folks that were just kind of like myself back when I was a mid, burnt out on the sport and needing something new, still having that competitive edge, very high level, if not ability to walk on or be recruited by Navy for cross country or swimming. So it's about 50 50. To that end, though, with regards to the way the varsity level of sport is it, the swim is paramount, because the bike is done in a pack and you ride together as opposed to solo, so you need to be able to get out early on the swim, and so now I'm recruiting a lot more, or pulling a lot more swimmers, your folks with swimming backgrounds, to the program, because it's, it's, it's a lot more necessary. You need to have a deep background in swimming in order to make some of those those bike groups, which is kind of sad, because that means I'm not recruiting athletes that I can relate to.
Coach Edwards:I feel you know, I we brought over seven athletes from our club program. I kind of saw the writing on the wall. I wouldn't say I got all of those athletes to the club program because of knowing we would go varsity, but I it was sort of, you know, starting to see that swimming was being coming more important. But to that end. Then I see, like I have a good athlete that we left on the club program. She's, you know, she swam as a kid, but not to that level, she's just a beast. But hers is on the running and so she'll probably stay in the club program and be very good as a runner. She'll be able to work harder by herself across the distances as opposed to needing to come out of the water and be in the packs for the swim like it is in varsity now.
Karl:Right, right, you know, as you were explaining the importance of swimming there just now, I kind of flashed on a quote. Has nothing to do with triathlon, but when I used to watch a lot of golf and the Masters tournament, one of the things they always said was you can never win the Masters on the first day, but you can lose it. And it sounds like this is kind of where the triathlon is as it relates to swimming. Right, I mean, you've got to be able to have a strong swimming foundation just to put yourself in the mix, because if you don't, then you're just basically going to be chasing the pack. Is that fairly accurate?
Coach Edwards:That's 100% correct and for what's worth like and that's where now the varsity level of Traffon is it definitely requires you to even more.
Coach Edwards:So you can totally lose the race in the swim and you would know kidding. Just get left in the groups. You know the groups, even if it's three to four athletes, can work together and move up the road, but if you're a minute and a half off the back, you know over a 10 minute, you know the swims are only it's 750 meter swim. We have athletes that are a minute and a half back. That ends up being four to five minutes in a 30 minute bike, whereas in a longer distance Traffon you can make up that time on the run and you don't lose it on the bike because, like in an Ironman or a and that's the biggest difference from, like, you know, an Ironman, traffon or other what we call non-draft Traffons, where you see athletes on bikes, where they're like they got their arms out in front of them and they're in the arrow position, those athletes are riding solo, where our athletes are working together on the bike and so the bike has meaning that reflects what their swimming abilities are.
Karl:Right, right, okay. So now I want to kind of slowly transition into the Traffon at the Naval Academy and the first thing I want to talk about was how it relates, how this sport in particular relates to the physical mission. In other words, you know, based on your experience, what is it that connects you to that physical mission of the Naval Academy? When you consider the Traffon, in other words, what makes it unique compared to some of the other sports, do you think?
Coach Edwards:I think it encompasses everything you want in a midshipman and the fact that morally, mentally, you are challenging yourself, you're exposing athletes to different aspects of sport that require a lot of technique. So there's a mental game to it. It's making it's. People have to be in charge of gear, they have to take care of their gear, because if they take care of their gear, their gear takes the care of them. So I have to teach them that.
Coach Edwards:That my Marine Corps mentality there, right, right, but then a part of the physical mission, it's more important than just like becoming a better runner or a better swimmer, and I don't want to like, I don't.
Coach Edwards:You know running and swimming, both have you know aspects of obstacles, but in a Traffon you are out more in the elements and you are exposed to other people and what they're doing.
Coach Edwards:And so you it's not just you going down a lane, it is you. Potentially having someone hitting you in the face with their hand when they're swimming is potentially someone clipping you on the bike and you have to be able to recover on your bike and the run comes late in the race, and so there's so many more obstacles that I think it's so much more what the military wants out of us as leaders is not just complete the mission, but overcome obstacles along the way. And so I feel like the mentality is perfect for what we want to see as future naval officers, and since that end, I feel like I need to recruit the best midshipmen. They're like someone who wants that challenge, someone who wants to overcome obstacles, because if they have that mentality, then they're not only are they going to be a tremendous athlete for me, they're also for our team, but they're also going to be a great naval officer down the line.
Karl:All right, well put. Okay, so you touched on some of the distances for the college triathlon, so let's go into a little bit more detail on those. Just run down the standard distances for me. And the thing I'm most curious about is recognizing I was kind of taking a look at your schedule and there is, like you know, you have your first meet what on September 3rd and then one, I believe, on the following week, but usually there's about, I'm going to say, about two weeks in between competitions. After we talk about the distances, let's go with the time that you do the regional I'm sorry, the time that you do your last event and that two week period to the NCAA regional qualifier. What would that training cycle look like, recognizing that it's a buildup to, ultimately, the championships which are going to be in November?
Coach Edwards:Yeah. So I think it's important to understand the distances. You know you've spoken to the Ironman and the Ironman being, I think it's just. You know you've said the distances, but for our race it's an hour long race which, for what it's worth, is longer than pretty much any other NCAA sport or individual sport. Like the longest with being of the men's 10K, whether 10K cross country, which is going to look at, you know, 28 to 33 minutes, and for women, the 6K, we're talking 20 to 24 minutes. So it's a long race, even though we call it a sprint distance triathlon.
Coach Edwards:So our sprint distance triathlon starts with sorry, so I apologize to all the sprinters out there, but it is a 750 meter swim, but that is by no stretch of the imagination, a sprint distance swim. So 750 meter swim, somewhere between eight and a half and a 12 minute swim, depending on the athlete a bike which is 20 kilometers or tries to be about 20 kilometers. So it's, you know it could be anywhere between 25 and 34 minutes and you know I'm giving you the very the highs and lows of those times. And then a 5K run. So everybody's pretty clued in on a 5K run and our ladies we're looking to try to get our ladies around 20 minutes and, honestly, some of the better athletes you know, if an athlete can run so 20 minutes for 5K off the bike, they're going to be, you know, a top 10 to top 20, top 20 athlete there at Nationals at the end of the season. So to that end, our schedule is, you know, unlike anybody else's schedule, where a first year school and I know this opportunities to race is key. So a lot of schools aren't looking for the opportunity to race as much Our athletes. I want our athletes to race. I want us to become the best racers. My plan is to recruit strong athletes that want to race and so I want to get our athletes, currently and future athletes, opportunities to race. That's where that's why they came to school. They want to race.
Coach Edwards:So we have a full season. We have four races, four regular season races. Most of our races are that sprint distance race, which is also our regional championships. So we will qualify for starting spots at our regional championships with individual performances at the regular season races. So those will give us starting spots on the regional championship and we will be using along the way, speed work actually with each sport, the timeframe between our last regular season race and our championship will be done with our base work.
Coach Edwards:We'll be done with our long bike rides. We'll be done with our most of our long runs, even though our championships is in November. But we will start to refine speed. Actually, most of our base work has been done. We over, or a lot of our base work has been done over the summer. We'll train through quite a few of our races coming up and then we'll start to refine and work on technique and work on, you know, making sure we're the refined athlete over the next, over the time periods as we get into late October. But in that and that's in every sport, whether it's, you know, whether it's shorter, faster intervals in the swim and or getting shorter segments on the bike as far as efforts and making sure we're even more refined with regards to like working together on the bike, cause quite a few of our ladies are going to come out of the water together and so they need to be ready to ride together and do turns on the bike together and figure out how to move up the road together fast.
Karl:All right, cool. So one of the things I was thinking about is when you break down and analyze your athletes' performance While back I did a feature. One of the sports I'm really into now at Navy is rowing Right. In fact, I bought a concept to rowing machine about four months ago just to replace my 25 year old lifecycle bike. But I actually had the opportunity and it was a great chance.
Karl:About almost two years ago I was out in Annapolis for the football game and I wanted to do a piece on the lightweight rowing team because they'd just come off of the national championship that year and Coach Bagnell was nice enough to take me out on Saturday morning when they were practicing and he had all three. He had three boats out at the same time and he'd just be kind of weaving in and out and just checking each rowers technique, you know and talking to them about the stroke mechanics and all that sort of thing. So it was mostly visual and not a lot of tech, whereas in football, you know, there is those eyes on the target for technique and everything. But then they got all kinds of stuff to analyze explosiveness and this and that and the other thing. What's your primary method? Is it eyeballs or is it a stopwatch and heart rate monitor? Is that as simple as it gets, or is there something more to it?
Coach Edwards:I would definitely say it can get super techy. We now have devices where you can measure power output per pedal stroke and, to be honest with you, as a varsity sport now it's awesome in the fact that we can probably start to expose our athletes to more of that stuff. When you tell somebody to go out, like specifically to the bike, you know the bike is a machine. Let's just call it what it is. It's a machine. And if I tell an athlete to go out and do a fast bike ride, do do I buy five minutes fast? No, an athlete finds a. You know, if I were just looking on speed, they could do five by five minutes going downhill and like, yeah, you went fast, but you probably didn't do anything. So to that end you need to measure the actual power that you were pushing into the pedal. So the beauty of being a varsity sport now is we will probably we can utilize some of those resources and get things like you know, the power for the bikes down the line here, but we're actually not doing that yet. The beauty and what I've found, especially through the club athletes as well as even individuals that I've worked with, I don't work with I've worked with a lot of individuals for like the last 15 years as well, and what I've found is athletes that get out there and work towards an effort level or work to learn how to push themselves and find out what it is to like push themselves, what we would call threshold, or right where your body feels like it's kind of like uncomfortable. Those athletes are the ones that, like, we can speak to and I also try to speak to what threshold is and we define our effort levels based on a perceived effort scale of like one to 10. But we also define those things as what they are, with what your blood is actually doing.
Coach Edwards:To that end, I do a lot to get them to be exposed to that and understand that and read their body, and then we can start to bring in numbers and be like, okay, all right, like I want them to go out there and do tempo runs or effort levels out on the road without a distance. For the first couple of runs I want them to start to. I don't want them to like look at the clock and see how fast they're going. I mean, we have these Garmin watches now that are like they tell us instantaneously how fast we're going. But if I have an athlete that's completely wedded into the numbers right away, they're not going to push themselves, so let's pull the numbers. I prefer to pull the numbers away, especially as we're starting out or as an athletes in their infancies in any one sport, and then learn how their body feels. Then we'll weave numbers into it and start to go for pace and try to push to numbers or use numbers as a carrot, not as a strict. This is where you need to be.
Karl:All right, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'll tell you what. We're going to take a short break, but first I wanted to let you all know that you can stay totally up to speed on what's going on with Navy Sports by joining our group Facebook page and by following this podcast. I'll put a link in the show notes to get you to our Navy Sports Nation group page, and following the show is even easier. All you gotta do is tap the follow button. Whether you're listening to Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcasts, it doesn't matter. This will automatically drop the most recent episode into your library as soon as it's released, and you can listen to it whenever you're ready. It is definitely the easiest way to show your support for Navy Sports Central and the fastest way to grow the Navy Sports Nation community. So go ahead and hit that follow button right now. We'll be right back. All right, thanks for staying with us on Navy Sports Central.
Karl:Karl Darden here with you, and I'm joined by Billy Edwards from the class of 2000, who coached the Navy Sports Nation group and the Navy Sports Nation group. So we'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We're live now, so stay safe. Stay telling us about Navy Sports, nahd.
Coach Edwards:It's a dream, honestly. I was part of some of the earliest thoughts of going to NCAA. I got to write, and I got to write verbiage that was presented to the NCAA College Women's Committee. I had Brad Hecker. His name is Brad Hecker. He was the guy who wrote a master's thesis about NCAA triathlon. He's like this is something you could do eventually, and I was like you know.
Coach Edwards:I was like you know I mean to do triathlon at this level in what we call a daily training environment, versus programmed coaching and programmed as in like writing workouts and then seeing an athlete from time to time, which is what I was doing with the club to now see my athletes on a daily basis and the other day going out on an easy run with them, which they honestly didn't want me to, but going out there and seeing and I was in, and now you know for what's worth being compensated for my time and but also diving into the weeds with my athletes and like starting to like really spend time with them and now have the time to like build these athletes into, you know, not to take them to the next level with regards to their abilities.
Coach Edwards:I mean, we've always I think we've always pushed the mental game really well and I feel like I've done a good job pushing the mental game and making them strong athletes, whereas now it's fun I can it's just a told level of fun to like add more technique and spend a bit more time, like I can actually spend an extra couple of moments, you know, talking to an athlete about like why they're like.
Coach Edwards:I talked to another athlete the other day and she was, she had a hamstring issue and I was like, no, well, this is why we need to be, you know, we need to be working on strength here and not working on stretch, and this is why and she was like like mind blown, like like okay, all right, this makes sense, and so I can get a little, a lot more buying in on some of the refined things.
Coach Edwards:So I think we're just going to make just another level of athlete, which is just super fun because they've always been there and we've taken some of our athletes to that like borderline elite level. You know we've qualified eight to 10 athletes over the years to be elite level athletes, to just haven't we actually haven't actually utilized them at that level because of the time restrictions, but now we have a little more time and so hopefully we can take some more of our athletes to that elite level and do even more things at the national and potentially international level down the line. So it's super exciting to just interact with my athletes a lot more or have the opportunity to interact with my athletes so much more.
Karl:Okay, that actually provides a nice segue into the next question here. So what I'm going to do is you've got a total of seven athletes on your team, correct?
Coach Edwards:Yep seven athletes this year.
Karl:So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to name them off one by one and I'd like for you just to kind of throw out one thought that basically you know captures what they're all about as a competitor. Okay, so we'll start with Zoe Adama.
Coach Edwards:This is fun self reflective.
Karl:Okay, cool. And what makes you say that?
Coach Edwards:Oh, you want me to add more to that?
Karl:Yeah, just a little bit. I'm just looking for a little context around each observation.
Coach Edwards:Very, very introspective with regards to how her workouts go and how and how she races, she's very, very analytical.
Karl:Okay, all right, very good, hailey Harris Beast.
Coach Edwards:She can threat. She just she's ready to grind. She's so ready to grind. I got almost. I almost need to hold older. I need to hold her back a little bit. This is my first year working with her. She actually came over from the swim team.
Karl:Oh, is that right.
Coach Edwards:I mean, hailey Harris is a Patriot League rookie of the year as a plea, but, like I said, she was a bit burnt down on swimming. She needed a new avenue for for competitiveness and she had started talking to our team as a early, early in her youngster year and at this point I'm like, well, now we're going to go with what's worth? With your abilities, you can be a freaking, tremendous NCAA athlete. So yeah, no, she's a beast.
Karl:Okay, very good, sarah Jarman.
Coach Edwards:Tactician. She's a tactician. She's a racer. She's she. She did junior triathlon or did she track on as a high school student, and she knows how to game. She's raced in the top 10 at club nationals with inferior physical abilities to some athletes. She knows how to get herself into the race in all the elements swim, bike and run. So yeah, she's a tactician.
Karl:Right, right, maddie Klippenstein.
Coach Edwards:Mad Dog, she brings the fun. She wants to go fast but she's fun. But she brings the fun to the team.
Karl:All right, reagan Quilty, who is your team captain.
Coach Edwards:I mean we're not doing this sport this year. Like I, mr Gladchuk asked me when do you want to start? And I said this year and he was like he was kind of taken aback, like because we knew we weren't going to start until March. But I was like no, no, sir, we're starting this year. Like I want to start this year.
Coach Edwards:I have Sarah Jarman, who's a tactician and can game, and then I have Reagan Quilty, who is the leader of the team. She is the road captain. She has no problems, you know speaking up and she will not interrupt me, but respectfully caveat things I say and put them into her own language. She is the road captain, she is out there. She picked it all up. She did also did traffic on as a as a high school student. I mean, her parents are both grads, her moms are freaking tremendous traffic on coach as well. Her brother is a submarine officer and was on the rugby team actually, but to that end, reagan's our leader and she's a leader within the brigade as well. And so to have her and Sarah as first years, it was like yeah, no, we do this this year because this is how we step up on the right foot and she's doing all the right things with regards to developing, taking our culture from the club program and bring it over to varsity.
Karl:Yeah, and how important is that? Right? I mean, get that culture established early, so then you have something to feed into for, you know, future recruits and so forth. So good job on her, emily Vela.
Coach Edwards:Oh, she's my silent assassin and I don't even think she knows it. She's got a lot of tools I'm constantly sharing, I'm constantly showing her how to use them and, as she, when she figures it out and puts it all together, yeah, she's are. She's a little quieter, but she's, she's. She's got a lot of tools and she's pretty tenacious, right.
Karl:Okay, and Anna Wecklick.
Coach Edwards:Oh, aggressive, aggressive, so aggressive, like as a club athlete. She was the fastest swimmer in the club in the club program last year in the in the country. She can freaking motor. So yeah, she's, she's aggressive. I have to hold her back. We have to refine how to make this aggressiveness reflect into her racing across the hour. But, yeah, no aggressive, and she's. She's our only youngster as well. Oh, is that right? Which is, which is no problem. It's all good. I appreciate aggressiveness and we just have to figure out how to direct it properly.
Karl:Okay and actually kind of leads into to the next question. You talked about what stands out about these athletes and I'm wondering I don't know if this is just too vague a question of I'm not even sure how easy it is to answer but looking at all the different things they bring to the table, how is it that you can leverage them to help make the team better? What are some of your processes around that?
Coach Edwards:I mean I feel like I've got like such a great mix of athletes and they all have such a great attitude and I mean, to that end, like, as we've pressed on, I felt like it was the right thing to do to do this, this, to do this this year. But as we've moved on, it's just in the end to have them hang, you know, hanging out together more often. And I want to reiterate the fact that the club program, this club program, has been going on since the early 90s. So this is not just me, this is, this is a lot of for what's worth. It's found, a found on the mentality of, you know, nsw guys, like seals, we seals have been the backbone of our team. When we have more seals going, you know, tossing their covers, guys going seals, we are awesome. Like, when we have more women tossing their covers and putting a pinning on second lieutenant bars in the Marine Corps, we are awesome. Those are, those are athletes. They're the ones that want the challenge. So what we currently have is just a, you know, a great mixture of you know like leaders and followers in the, in the even. Even our second, like our core group is our second class right now and you know they're going to be the ones that you know they, they, they are, they have similar abilities, which is great, but they all, like, come at it from totally different angles.
Coach Edwards:With regards to, like you know, some of our seniors, having done the sport, a couple of, like one of our athletes, probably I would say I don't want to call our weakest, but like one of our weaker athletes, like she was, like she came to visit as a, as a senior in high school, and one of my team captains was like, who she never got to race with, was like coach, this girl's got to be on the team, she's freaking, like she's, she's what we want, and I mean she knows who she is and she's and she is, she's exactly what I want an athlete. So we have a mix of folks that come at it with, like, different attitudes, like whether they they knew they wanted to be a traffic when they came to the academy. Or, like Sarah Jarman, she came to run at the academy and realized, you know, collegiate running wasn't for her and so she went back to track, you know? So it's.
Coach Edwards:We have a huge mix of where people come from. You know how they compete and I think, to that end. They they get along and they have. They have different, they have great midshipman beliefs and and I think that's, I think maybe that's the core of of of who they are and why they're making each other better right now.
Karl:Okay, all right, so I'm going to kind of stay on that track a little bit. And as it relates to recruiting and recognizing, obviously, that this is your first year as a varsity sport but it's as an established sport at the academy, you've got the club program that you can draw from and obviously your athletes can act as recruiters themselves when they're you know out and about whether it's in within the brigade itself or maybe they see some people with some promise in their hometowns or whatever. But has the sport gotten to the point where there are colleges actively recruiting triathletes or is it still just something that's in a building process?
Coach Edwards:No, there's. There is high school. There are high school athletes, there is junior triathlon. Is it high school programs? No, it's, it's club programs, probably club programs, probably more similar to like, like swimming and the fact that it does require more, more time and technique and more details, as opposed to like. I mean running requires more time. Running swimming requires more technique, so maybe more similar to like a swimming club. So there are, there are triathlon clubs. You know I have, I'm trying to establish relationships with some of these clubs and to that end, I guess I'd you know if you're a recruit and you've gotten to the four, you know whatever point in this talk, know that like.
Coach Edwards:It's not that it hasn't been a priority, but it's been something I definitely am like behind on a little bit. I've definitely been tracking a lot of athletes, so we want to bring on more athletes that have been exposed to triathlon and I think, in as a now varsity program, we now have the ability to bring on the athlete that wants to go to number one, a big school with a solidly supported athletic department, and that's what we are. We're a division one NCAA school. So we have that, we have the ability and we have the desire to compete at the highest level. We have that. And then two more things. We have a tremendous educational opportunity, which I don't wanna like say that the other schools that are currently in the sport don't, but we have the highest academic standards out of the current schools out there. And then, finally, we present an opportunity for athletes, and some of these high school athletes, some of them, really have the desire to make the Olympic team and there's one or two programs that are out there that they're probably gonna give them the opportunity to potentially see more opportunity to maybe be in an Olympic pipeline, which is super, super tight. But what we have is an opportunity to be a school that gives you the education and the athletic opportunities and then have a great, exciting and a career that reflects your sport.
Coach Edwards:So I'm looking for those kinds of athletes. I'm looking for some of the athletes that maybe just started, maybe it swam and ran and just got into the sport and they're finding successes and I wanna refine those successes with them and bring them be a part of our organization, because I think those are the ones and I mean, I don't for what's worth, I don't feel like we're that much different this year than what we were last year as a club program, because we have been developing those athletes. But I just think now we're gonna get the ones that wanted to compete. They wanted to wear that, they wanted an opportunity to be a varsity level athlete, and so now we have the opportunity to give people.
Coach Edwards:If I look back on myself as a high school student, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to compete at division one level, I wanted to compete at the highest level and I almost feel like it's not fair, as like it's not fair to my club program, because that club program competes at a very high level and we developed tremendous athletes. But now I also have now I have the NCAA badge and the NCAA varsity backing and a larger backing from the athletic department and to that end we'll also we have more opportunity now to even expose some young men as well. So I mean the club program will continue, will continue to develop athletes.
Coach Edwards:If an athlete hasn't done triathlon and they're a good swimmer, runner, but maybe they're not great, we could put them into the club program and they can develop. And if they do develop their skills more, we can bring them over to the varsity program. And if they don't, and maybe they're just not and maybe they're just a great. You know they're a tenacious athlete that has a challenge, but they just don't have the quite the speed on the swimmer of the run. They can stay in the club program and compete in triathlon at the highest level, cause we've been in the top five overall as a club program every year, except for one in my last 15 years, and it still presents an opportunity to be a part of a big school and compete at a very high level. So I hope that explains. But yeah, so we have multiple avenues to compete.
Karl:So yeah, and it is very nice to have that kind of flexibility within your program. I think the triathlon event itself is kind of cool because it does allow athletes to compete either at the varsity level now or the club level. And considering that the club level is, you know, going against a lot of high level programs anyway, I think that's awesome because you know I was when I was at the academy. I was not a varsity guy, I mean, first of all, even if I had the athletic skills I mean with me, based on the major I picked, it would have been pretty dicey trying to finish the sport and graduate. So I made a business decision there where I was gonna just focus on just the intramural stuff and just, you know, get through the whole academic experience.
Karl:But I think that those club opportunities are incredible that they have to offer at the triathlon. You know the sport triathlon, rugby, any of the other ones there is, hockey is another one, so anyway. So thank you for that. Now, coach, I do wanna spend some time discussing your vision for how you wanna grow and expand the triathlon program, but before we do that I wanted to ask you two things. First, what's one of your favorite memories in your 16 years of coaching these athletes.
Coach Edwards:You know, I think in 2017, we lost the Klesi National Championships by a few points due to some weird scoring elements. You know, it's see, you beat us based on the score, but our team had. When we raced it was in the club environment. They raced to the. They raced. Six of my men finished within the top 16. Four of our ladies raced in the top or no. Six of our men finished in the top 14,. Four of our ladies finished in the top 16. And we had what they call a mixed team relay. And these are relays.
Coach Edwards:It's like a male female, male female each person gets to do a single triathlon, a very, very, very short, single triathlon. And this is before. You only allowed one team and we had two teams out on the road and we were out there like we put two teams out there and we started out with Brian Holder and Kevin Brian Primo and Kevin Holder to our best swimmers, and you know we, we, you know I actually had athletes that were like coach, we're putting together two teams and I'm like I don't know if that's a good idea. Like coach, no, we're gonna put together two teams, so we're gonna be fine. All right, I'll support it, let's do this and I had my A team and I had my B team and my B team was like, no, we're gonna be the A team, I'm like, anyways, they got out there and we were, they got went through the first leg and they were one and two and then they handed off to the ladies and we were still one and two and that race actually never finished.
Coach Edwards:But I had my two teams, my men's they were in the on the second leg of four and my two ladies were just going away from the entire pack and the race was in Tuscaloosa, alabama, and they shut down the race because of a thunderstorm coming in. It was a good call, but the best part about was walking around and just listening to everybody say, oh my God, have you seen what Navy's doing to everybody? And I was just like, and I just stood there Wherever I went, people were just going like Navy's killing it and for what's worth, statistically I've looked at the numbers it was the best team to that point. I mean, there's actually been some teams that may have done a little bit better recently, but it was statistically to that point it was the most dominant.
Coach Edwards:Even though we didn't win Technically, it was the most dominant team and it was so awesome to see these athletes none of only having like one athlete who'd ever done triathlon just taking it to these grad students and professional triathletes in the club environment and just then having people say, wow, look at Navy. And so to that end, I hope we see a bit of that down the line.
Karl:Yeah, yeah, no doubt, and thanks for that story. I really appreciate you sharing it. That was pretty awesome. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about was your experience at your first Ironman Triathlon World Championships. I think that was in 2005. So there's just no way I could let you get away without checking in with you on that. So could you account that for us? What were your goals going into it? What was your mindset as you were continuing with your training and the run up to the race? And then I was wondering if you could describe the feeling that you had immediately after crossing the finish line.
Coach Edwards:It was October 2005. It was I had done my first Ironman in Tempe, arizona, in April. I had had a phenomenal race. I was 18th overall. I was the third amateur. I had smashed it, had a perfectly paced day. Then I ended up doing triathlon for the Marine Corps, doing short course triathlon. I had also run cross country. I was also then also slated to be on the marathon team and I was doing a lot. I was coming in. I had just in 2004,. I was the top Marine Corps Marathoner.
Coach Edwards:So I had all sorts of abilities and along the way towards my first Kona I was like it was like training and I think I've talked to my athletes about this recently and the fact that like I had a pizza in front of me and I want to eat the whole damn thing right away and I went for it. I mean I just trained and trained. I went out to on a training camp with a Marine and we did like back to back 112 mile rides. We did a ride. We did a ride where I think we rode about. We rode like like a hundred miles with all these you know top level pro athletes and then I got off the bike and I ran like 23, 24 miles, like at like I'm not godly pace.
Coach Edwards:It was a phenomenal training day. And then, like a week or two later, I freaking did it, went out and did like the hardest hilliest run around my area. And then I did, oh, and I think the morning of or I had done like a like a 8K road race in my town and you know, smashed it, like crushed everybody and like set a five. You know, and then don't know if I set a five mile PR, but I freaking killed it. So, all that being said, phenomenal training, got to Kona cooked.
Karl:Oh man.
Coach Edwards:So I had, I had done, I had probably done my Ironman somewhere in the in the weeks leading up to that race and I just wanted it all. I just wanted it all. And so I mean I, I, I raced well, I think I think it was just outside of the top 10 of my age group, which you know. I think I think I finished just outside the top 100, which is phenomenal because you have people coming in from all over the world. I was, but I was extreme, I was extremely disappointed. I was so disappointed. I didn't, I was.
Coach Edwards:I looked back on it and I'm a little, you know, I wish I'd had someone like myself to tell me like what I had done. It's taken me years to figure out, but I mean, it was magical. At the same time, you know, this adds a whole another element to it, but I had just lost my sister. So that was like with me, as I was like running down a lead drive. My parents were there. It was a very emotional experience for me. There was a lot of things that were like in my mind. So, oh, I think you, when you end about their racing for you know, nine plus hours is what I was doing. You are just absolutely exposed, both physically as well as mentally and emotionally, and I lost it, you know, at the finish line. You know, just thinking about it right now it makes me I'm holding back a little bit here, trying to, like you know, be, but yeah, I mean it was.
Coach Edwards:It was a hugely reflective day as an athlete. I was super disappointed as a coach. Looking back on myself, I had a great year and I need to look at that. So it was always, you know, iron man World Championships for me was never a great reflection of my abilities. But at the same time I, you know, I didn't fully enjoy the experience. I wish I looked back on some of these world championships and realized, billy, or, as I normally do, william, william, it's the freaking world championships, dude, relax like you're, you know you're doing good man, and so I wish I could go back and self coach myself a little bit better in that respect.
Karl:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But so I mean you went on to compete in the in the worlds for several years, right, I mean through? I see I actually got some results in front of me here through 2009. Is that correct?
Coach Edwards:Yeah, I qualified as an amateur my first two years and then as a to the Iron man World Championships. I went into my first year as a pro, my first year out of the Marine Corps, qualified for Kona in my first shot and then the next year I had a lingering hamstring injury, came back the following year with a different coach and a different training mentality, qualified again and then what's not on there is that I did a couple Iron Man's in 2015 and 2016 and I did something I'd tell people not to do and I turned down my Kona slots so I could have gone back and raised age group I could. So I can say that I've actually turned down two Kona slots.
Karl:Yeah, how many. How many people can say that right? I know it's kind of a flex, it's a little bit of a flex, right, right, and now let's, let's. Let's talk about what was I mean. You mentioned your very first one and how well you performed on that one the Arizona, the Iron man, arizona. Was that your favorite one, or is there another? What's your favorite triathlon venue? Let's look at it that way.
Coach Edwards:Oh, madison, wisconsin. Okay, it's phenomenal, it was, it's always has the greatest crowds. I did that race after and this has had so many elements to it. I did that one year after having done a 1200 kilometer ride in France three weeks before, and that was. And I did that 1200 kilometer ride in 49 hours without sleep. And so then I went and did Ironman, like three or four weeks later I can't remember if I was still working with my very scientific coach, dr Phil, who actually worked on the like the sub two marathon project, but he was not pleased with this runup to my Ironman.
Coach Edwards:My Ironman obviously reflected that I had ridden my bike so long that I couldn't feel the last three fingers on each hand. I I don't hope I'm not putting races together, but at one point, like I was, I was getting out under the bike course and I didn't pay attention to which gearing I was in and I totally like went from big or went from big ring to small ring, pushed it hard, going into a turn and kick, like literally kicked myself onto the ground. And then I'm like yelling and the volunteers are like who did someone, did someone crash you out? And I was like no, yelling at myself for my idiocy, but I mean, it was an. It was an event that I delivered to myself way too many or not too many. I delivered to myself more challenges than were potentially necessary.
Coach Edwards:But again, on the you know, on the day I was, you know, potentially disappointed, but in retrospect it was. It was a good performance. It was. I'm glad I did everything that I did. I went to Ironman Wisconsin multiple times over cooked. In fact, one year I did paste my friend Blake Benke it fell a Marine to like lead bill and then, like two weeks later or three weeks later, like I ran 50 miles with him at lead bill and then raced Ironman Wisconsin several weeks later, knowing full well after I paced my friend that I was like, yeah, I probably ruined my opportunities at Ironman not ruined and I want to say ruined because that's what's worth.
Coach Edwards:Like I would never like give up Like that was. Like even that pacing my friend was one of the like for 50 miles of a race was just probably one of the more athletic, one of the highlights of my athletic life. So, anyway, so I would say that, like you know, like Wisconsin has always been a great race for me to like reflect on what other adventures I have done beyond it, and I also loved the Ironman Wisconsin course, because you run through Camp Randall and the day before the race when you go to the mountain to pick up your pack and there's a race, you see like the Wisconsin folks like out there at barbecue and before their big games and stuff. So it's a lot of elements. So anyways, Okay, great.
Karl:Now I wanted to wrap things up by getting back to that question around your vision for the program. Obviously, there's a lot of excitement around this first year competing at the NCAA division one level. How do you see things growing over the next three to four years with respect to roster size and the competitive schedule?
Coach Edwards:So we're small. I wish I had one or two more right now, but seven is. But we have the right athletes, so I'm happy with that. So so to that end, I would like to get our roster size up to about 10, or 10 or 11 next year and then probably 12,. You know, I don't see us ever getting up to 15 unless the opportunities to the I think this is the biggest thing I wanna say is like opportunities to race. I mean, I definitely want my athletes to come to want to train and have fun training, but I want to give them the opportunity to race. So if I can't give an athlete the opportunity to race in the varsity environment, I want them to be in the club environment so they'll. You know, if an athlete's like gonna be a walk on, I'm gonna be like you are a good athlete. I need you to be a great athlete. Why don't you go to club and be a great athlete in club and potentially be common move, be a great athlete in the varsity sport? So, sort of speaking back to your last question, I do want to develop to be about a 10 to 12, at most 15 athlete.
Coach Edwards:To look back on the club program at one more time. You know we do have 23 roster spot on the club program. So we actually are limited on the club program. But yeah, so we will. We're not there right now. So we'll try to boost up our club roster spots to get back to it to those numbers 21 to 23. And then, racing wise, we're gonna race. I want to.
Coach Edwards:My current thought is to race more, race as much as we can, take the opportunities to race and expose our team, you know, to as many races as possible. Maybe down the line we determine that we don't race or not every athlete's races every race and maybe they only race two to four races before the championships, the regional championships, the national championships. So maybe that's what it ends up down the line. But along the way, you know, like this first year, like first paramount, develop a culture it's what we need to do. Like that's the first thing we need to do is develop a culture. And the best part is we have a culture from the club program. So we're gonna, you know, sort of take a lot of what we it's good about the club culture and bring it over to the varsity team. So, developing a culture, learning to become more refined athletes is. The other is the other goal. And then another goal is to like, just learn to go after excellence as well. So will we achieve excellence? I don't know, we might. We might, but not be afraid to freaking, go after it this year. So try to achieve excellence this year.
Coach Edwards:And it feels that may sound a bit weak, but I wanna be realistic with regards to what we have and we don't. We haven't seen what our team could do in these varsity races, so we wanna I want our athletes to put themselves out there and have some disappointment, but at the same time, I want it to be okay to not be okay with a race. I know that we can grow from it and cause I don't ever want my athletes to, even if we don't win, to consider it a bad year, like I want our athletes to like if we're not winning, we're learning. So I wanna continue to do that. See, like and what can we do with a bad year? What can we learn from that? And whether it's whether you're a senior or whether you're a plebe, you know what can you learn from not winning and take forward as a bit shipment or as a future naval officer.
Karl:Yeah, and I don't think you can have a better perspective than that, going into this first season competing at the division one level. All right, so, coach Edwards, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
Coach Edwards:I appreciate it, Karl. Thanks man.
Karl:Yeah, no problem at all, and it looks like the the NCAA championships are gonna be right here in 10-B, so we've gotta figure out a way to get that covered also.
Coach Edwards:Awesome Thanks. You gotta talk to my athletes down the line, so I appreciate it.
Karl:That sounds good, coach. Take care. Okay, coming up next we have our question of the day. This is Karl Darden and you're listening to Navy Sports Central. All right, thanks for staying with us as we head down the home stretch. It is time for our question of the day. So, as always, let's check out the responses to the question. From our last show, If you recall, it focused on Navy's 1952 gold medal winning crew known as the Great Eight, and we're gonna be talking about the Navy's first ever Navy's first ever Navy's first ever Navy's first ever Navy's first ever Navy's first ever is the Great Eight.
Karl:And here is the question Navy's Great Eight crew won the gold medal in the Helsinki Olympics in 1952. How many consecutive races did they win between 1952 and 1954? Was it A29, B30, C31, or D32? In looking at the results, the leading vote-getter was B30, with 84% of you going with that choice. Next was D32 races, and 10% of you picked that number. After that was C31, with 5% of you going that route. The first option, A, which was 29 races, didn't get any votes at all. It did say 1% there, but I think that was just so the math could work out, because when I pulled up the names, there was nobody listed there. So, believe it or not, the correct answer is actually A 29 consecutive races, and since that time there have been some pretty awesome crews that come out of those big programs like Washington, Cal and Princeton, but nobody's even come close to matching the dominance of the Grade Eight over that three-year period.
Karl:Okay, now let's get to this episode's question. Earlier in the show I mentioned that Navy Women's Triathlon coach, Billy Edwards, is a Naval Academy graduate from the class of 2000. How many other sports at Annapolis have a Navy grad as part of their coaching staff? Is it A5, B6, C8, or D9 sports? You all can take some time to think about that one and get back to me with your answers. I'll have the question up on the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page by the end of the day.
Karl:One last note before I sign off. The Navy Sports Central Midwatch segment will be making its return next week. We will be following one male and one female student athlete and highlighting their performances as the season goes on. That's gonna do it for this edition of Navy Sports Central. Thank you all so much for joining us Now if you'd like to see more of our videos. Thank you all. So much for joining us Now. If you'd like what you've heard, please be sure to hit that follow button wherever you get your podcasts and remember to get the word to all the other Navy fans out there. Once again, I'd like to thank Coach Billy Edwards of the Navy Women's Triathlon team for being with us today. We wish him the very best as he leads his triathletes into their first season as a varsity program beginning this weekend.
Karl:Our question of the day continues to be a show favorite. You can get in on that by joining the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page and giving your answer to this week's question. I will pin it to the top so you don't miss it. And just a quick reminder the views expressed on Navy Sports Central are my own and do not reflect those of the US Naval Academy or Navy Athletics. By the way, the music used in Navy Sports Central comes to you courtesy of Audio Jungle. This is a great site for purchasing the rights to use the music from thousands of artists around the world, and those featured in the podcast will be credited in our show notes. Talk to you soon, everybody. Until next time. This is Karl Darden Go Navy beat Army.
