 Hello, I'm Susie Feist and I'll be interviewing Greg Williams, the equestrian coach at Auburn University. So, what was your major in college? Animal Science. Here at Auburn University. Awesome. And I got a adult education much later, but I've always been involved in the animal side. What is a day like as an equestrian coach? Well, right now they're very different. It's different from anything we've ever experienced before. So we might talk a little bit about that as I walk you around. We usually start typically as our season begins as a coach. Our workouts start at 5.45 in the morning. We're actually housed with football, so we work out at the football weight room. And those strength coaches put our whole team through the workout. And we're a large team or the largest women's team at Auburn with 40, usually keeping around 40 team members this year depending on how our season goes. We might stay around 36, but so it's a big group and they fit in that facility well. And then they usually head to class and then we start practice sessions and you're going to be out here for two hour block. We keep it divided up so that you can go through, you know, different sections so the arenas don't get too crowded. We run a minimum of two arenas at the same time all afternoon. Then usually we'll have a team meeting like on Monday nights and then they start working with their tutors in the evening. So they're full days. Awesome. What is the best thing about your job? Like when they're in school, we're then in the office doing all that kind of stuff. So as soon as our workouts are over, we're doing our meetings and all the background work and then we all head to practice for the whole afternoon. So what's the best thing about your job? The students. Being a horse person though, you know, you love the horses, but for me it's always been about the students. I'm really an Auburn kid and Auburn wasn't known for the horse industry, you know, early on in my career. And so I'd moved off as a professional trainer and never dreamed I could come back to Auburn and raise my kids here. But a job came open in Animal Science and we were trying to build a horse program. We're working on that and that continues to grow. We've just hired a new faculty member that's going to be working in the teaching program this year. So keep your eyes out on her. We will be, but then I, God got to come back here and started the team and have been just blessed to be able to work with students and horses. Probably my favorite thing about all of it has been Auburn, the town and university I know and the sport I know is known all over the country now. So I love that part. Yeah. What sort of championships have you received? Well, we've won the SEC championship. We've won several times. We've won six national championships. We're on the way to win the seventh national championship when COVID hit. They did still award us the regular season SEC championship, but without being able to play in that national championship, we had, we were undefeated. I mean, we'd already beat everybody. We're going to be playing at the national championships at least once. I had a good slate of judges. We were so excited to get to go play in this. And so I really feel like this would have been one of our strongest national championships. So that would have been our seventh one. So we've, we've won a lot of them. We've got a lot of individual accolades. We've got over 90 all Americans. We've got, we've won individual titles. And so I feel like we've won everything there is to win. And the most important thing is always talk about planting a seed that you're never going to shade under. So the big thing I want is the foundation, the title I want the most is the national championship that's won by Auburn when I'm no longer the head coach. Then I'll know we've done it right. What sort of workout routine do the ladies on the team do? Well, the strength coach has changed it up a pretty good bet. But it usually starts off again, they're a very large team. So they'll start off in the indoor field, which 100 yards indoors and they stretch two to three lines with wise on that football field. And they run them through a whole series of warm ups and then they might be doing a lot of drills out in there or they might have right after the warm ups. They can head straight into the weight room and the weight, what they're doing in there changes all the time. But once they've all learned how to do it, they teach a lot of technique, but then it gets fun when they know what's going on. They turn the music up real loud and I mean, they don't let them just slowly walk. They literally have to be hustling from right to field to whichever piece they're doing. I mean, so as they finish the set, they're kind of slow jogging to the next one. They don't get to walk. So I mean, it looks like you've kicked an anthill over with loud music when they're working out. It's pretty motivating. How long have you been coaching? Well, I started the team in 1996. I mean, we're recruiting kids now that the juniors were now allowed to talk to them. They're all born in 2004. So it's just amazing how long it's been. So we were a club team for six years. We didn't go varsity until 2002. So I started in 96, went varsity in 2002 and just add those years up. So it's been 18, I'm sorry, 20 years now, no, 18 years as the varsity coach and then add another six. So that's for a while. What's the biggest challenge you faced when computing? That varies. That's a good question. It depends a little bit on the team that you're facing. I would say the greatest challenge, though, is just your team dynamics. It took us a while to really get on the map and have the recruits build a program that you're really getting the top recruits across the country, which we do now. So the big thing I look for now are those that are really going to be able to be team first type players. Something that you can all throw a little bit of advice in here with this is finding players also that want to be coached and can take the truth. There are some that have changed trainers any time they start hearing things they don't want to hear and they kind of have that habit. You've got to be with a trainer that's good. Our high school coach is good in whatever you're doing, but you've got to have some coaches that are going to be honest with you. And if they can't be honest with you, you're not going to be better. So I do tell some parents and say, listen, you have sit down with them. These trainers have got to treat you like clients, but if you want your kid to be good, then you've got to have them push some. I used to think that the reason some of our best kids were the daughters of professionals and they've ridden since they were little. I thought they've had to ride everything in the barn and it is true. They've had a lot of opportunity. They ride a lot of horses because it's their parents' occupation. But what I've really come to realize is they've just been told the truth from the get-go because their parents weren't worried about hurting their feelings. So I think honesty is something you need to do and you need to have that conversation with a coach or trainer just so that they have your permission. That doesn't mean being hard on them or anything, but it just means not just telling them stories just so they'll keep paying you for lessons and training. Yeah. Do you want to start walking to the barn maybe? Sure, absolutely. I've got like three questions left. I've got to pass somebody, so I've got to mask up for a second. This is our new world. All right, so that was, actually I could have shown you. Well, the Morgan walked in. I'm going to go back and show you. This is our training room in here. Now let's separate and take this off. This is our team room. Everything right now we're getting designed for the traffic flow that we've got to do during COVID. You know, we were the first part of uploading. We're going to make sure that people aren't just congregating in buildings. We've got this block for our locker room. We're not going to use the flow and get to the restrooms, get through the training room. You can see some of our national chairs, six of our national championship trophies right there. Those are something we love. Some SEC championship trophies right here. So we're very proud of those. Now we're going to go ahead to the barn. And this is coming up on our barn out here. We're blessed. You talk about being here for a long time. They named the barn after me and my family, which our first date. Hang on one second. Dad stopped them from working for just a second. So this is our barn. We've got tie stalls like this grooming stalls inside. Go ahead and show you the back. So we've got more tack up areas out here. Is that showing up on there? I'm looking away from it. So yes, sir. And then our Walker, the Walker's a gated Walker and you can walk trot, can them in either direction. Just set a, you need to set a timer on it and let it run. Um, so then our stalls are nice. We've got covers. If we have a horse that's, you know, not barn friendly, we can actually put a yoke cover right here. We've got automatic waters in the back. We've got these stainless steel feed troughs. And with automatic waters, you sometimes don't know how much a horse is drinking. But if you look up here, we have digital readouts that will say how much the horses are drinking. And that is a quite a blessing. It's like can a nonstop. So you see, we've got this covered up. So he can't stick his head out and grab somebody. So this is our failure that area. We've got the Thera plates, which those are what, you know, they vibrate, stimulate circulation. They really help a lot. I'm going to head back down the hallway where they're working here. Now show your attack rooms quickly. We've got an extremely good fire ventilation system. We've got everything's built out of stone, but we do have some wood up above. You can see on our ceiling. So we're there to be a fire in here. There's a huge vents open up on the back place of fire suppression system. We'll put it out instantly. Then the huge vents open up and pull all the smoke out. So a horse cannot die from fire or smoke inhalation in this barn. So this is our, our hunts each attack room. Everything is temperature control. So that's really nice. It's cool in here. And we keep the warm in the, in the summer. We've got iPads in each one. And those are so you can look up anything you need to know about any horse for practice, what kind of wraps, what kind of boots, what bits to put in on them. And also the work and stuff that the riders might be doing. That we keep a list every day that stays on those iPads and they can go through that. And as they check it and refresh it, it refreshes both iPads in both attack rooms. So they kind of can keep up with who's getting what done. So this is our Western attack room. And we also have, we've got labs. We've got feed rooms and, you know, it's a, it's been a dream to have this barn. We've got wash racks on the inside wash racks. We've got wash racks on both ends of the barn. So we can get everything knocked out really fast. It's just been an amazing, amazing situation for us. So, but the girls through the past have earned it. Wow. Here's a question. Do you have a favorite horse? Do I have a favorite horse? You know, I, every now and then I do. I kind of like the ones with personalities. But I think, I think the ones that I like really as a coach are the ones that are kind of performing consistently and that our riders can get the kind of ride that they're expecting out of them. But, you know, I don't know, it changes, it changes. The girls have all sorts of favorites that they like to ride. They're not all the same. Some of them like the quirky ones. Some of them just like the steady ones. And so I think probably every horse out here is a favorite by somebody. Okay. This is the last question. Okay. What advice would you give a youth interested in your job? In my job, it's still going to be the same thing as just being a good rider. You're going to need to be in the industry. You're going to have to compete. So I would say you're going to need to set a career path of working for trainers and getting a lot of experience as a professional trainer. You're definitely going to have to have a degree either way. But even if you're saying, well, I don't want to coach, but I want to be in the horse business, the biggest advice I tell people is you've got to make college career part of your training because it's very hard to maneuver later in life. And if you're going to do any kind of job that's hard and risky, like being a professional athlete, a professional trainer or music singer, you can say, well, I don't need a degree to be a professional horse trainer. But if you ever try to change later on, it gives you a safety net that you get to chase any tough dream you want. And so I think that's an important part of a college career. It kind of gives you the freedom to chase anything you want. And then if you do just decide to change careers, you're prepped for it. All right. Well, that'll be it then. Any other notes to add? No, when we get back to where we're having fans back in events, which I would imagine we might be able to do that this spring. So come see us ride. All right. I'll look into doing that. Thank you.