A Dude Named Rainbolt - part deux (reposted from 3/14/2007)

Last week I reposted a blog from 2006 (from Trackshark.com) when I had recently arrived to Wichita to take the job as the sprint coach about Coach Rainbolt.  This is the follow up I wrote in March of 2007.  Anyone who has worked with Bolt can probably relate to a lifetime of memories in whatever time you had working with him.  Here are just a few ...

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March 14, 2007 (Trackshark.com)

If I would have to describe Bolt’s management style, I would probably refer to it as “organized chaos”.  If you were to follow Bolt and our staff around for a day you would probably wonder how the Shockers maintain their level of success.  Bolt is a master of flying by the seat of his pants.

An example of this is our staff meetings.  I know Wendel McRaven, Brad Hunt, and Jenni Ashcroft are probably giggling right now thinking about some of those historic Rainbolt staff meetings.  Generally we all gather in his office, many times after practice in the early evening.  Bolt likes to keep the lights off except for one near his desk.  He feels this sets an unthreatening ambiance for a positive staff meeting.  Bolt likes good karma with his staff. :)

Most of the time we will meet for an hour or two and usually we get about 15 minutes of actual work done.  Here is an example of a conversation that might happen in one of our staff meetings:

Wise:  Ok, when are we leaving for Tulsa?

Burns:  Well, first event on Saturday morning is at 9:30 so we need to send some throwers down Friday night.

Hetzendorf:  Yeah, let’s take everyone competing before noon down Friday in a van and I’ll drive.

Yost: Ok how many hotel rooms do we need?

Rainbolt:  Hey, the last time we stayed in Tulsa, I went for a run around the town and you wouldn’t believe what I saw.  There was this homeless guy who was wearing a red robe with a Holiday Inn logo on it.  So I go back to the hotel manager and tell him about it and where they can go get their robe and they look at me like I’m out of my mind.  What the heck?

Wise, Burns, Hetzendorf, and Yost realize the meeting has been temporarily derailed from the tracks.

Over at practice, Bolt can appear to be what he would call “scatterbrained” at times, but usually all of the athletes get in the work they need to get done without too many trials and tribulations.  Bolt generally lightens the mood at practice with some kind of comment out of right field.  This is no joke, today we were setting up some hurdles and as some athletes are jogging by on their warmup and Coach Rainbolt asks them “Do any of you have a sandwich I could eat?”

While it may appear that Bolt’s style would be ineffective, nothing could be further from the truth.  Just sit in a meeting with him and a recruit and you will see one the smoothest and most skillful recruiting minds in the country.  I have seen kids almost jumping out of their chairs thinking about how fast they could run while getting coached by Rainbolt.  He makes people believe they can do things they never thought possible.  I know because I was one of them.

In many jobs, coming to the office in the morning is only the beginning of a non-eventful day with people who are sometimes not very interesting.  In my job, I go to work in the morning knowing full well I will be laughing and smiling most of the day because of the leadership style of Steve Rainbolt.  It’s why I drove out toWichita this past July without even visiting when he offered me a job and hopefully it’s why I’ll be working with “The Dude” for a long time to come.

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It's remarkable how the more things change, the more they stay the same!