Orchestrated progression is best conducted through a series of rhythms.
For 22nd-year Arizona track-and-field coach Fred Harvey, the program’s development has been formed by his ability to practice what he preaches.
Harvey’s mentality of having a “controlled fury” has done wonders for his athletes’ physical and mental advancements on the track . Harvey has coached dozens of All-Americans and NCAA individual champions during his time in Tucson.
“You have to allow your body to be able to perform the task that you’re putting it through,” said Harvey, who has athletes participating in the Texas Tech Open Multis and the UW Invitational this weekend.
“If you are tight and you don’t understand how to allow the speed to come out, you’re dead in the water.
“You have to be relaxed enough, but you have to be super aggressive.”
That approach applies to the coaching staff as well.
“I need for you to allow our athletes to see your calmness and confidence with them coming through you,” Harvey tells his fellow coaches. “If you’re nervous and you’re a wreck, trust me, they’re gonna be a wreck.
“So if you’re confident in what you’re doing and what they’ve done, they need to see that so that they can have confidence.”
Every coach has his or her own way of doing things. Likewise, every athlete has a preference for how they like to be coached.
“There are coaches at different institutions that are screamers, and they’re getting super results,” Harvey said. “If that’s what you need for you to be better, you need to go to that program.
“If you need me as Coach Harvey to get in your face and scream at you about what you’re not doing and shaking you up, this is the wrong program for you, We don’t do that here.
“We’re going to challenge you in an entirely different way. If you tell me you want to be an NCAA champion, I’m going to hold you to that standard.”
That balance has been instrumental to the success of Arizona’s latest record breakers. Sixth-year senior hurdler Talie Bonds and thrower Jordan Geist both broke their own school records last Friday at the Lumberjack Team Challenge in Flagstaff.
“He’s not only able to help you with the mental side of things, but he understands what it’s like to be a student-athlete and knows how to navigate those waters,” Geist said of Harvey.
Geist appears to have taken a page out of Harvey’s book.
“The technique is like a train track and everything else is the train,” Geist said. “As long as it’s staying on the tracks, you can push as long and hard as you want. But if you start pushing too hard, it’s falling off the tracks.”
Bonds also was able to benefit from Harvey’s methodology.
“After I broke the school record this past weekend, immediately after Coach Harvey was happy,” she said. “We hugged. He says, ‘We have got to work on this.’ I like that he holds me accountable and that he works just as hard as I do.”
Harvey’s coaching ideology runs deeper.
Although they mostly compete in individualized sports, Harvey is adamant about his athletes not having an ego as he believes it detracts from the team’s chemistry and overall success.
Harvey, an avid football fan, quoted Georgia’s two-time national-champion head coach about the mentality and importance of being a team.
“Kirby Smart said, ‘We do not allow entitlement to creep into our program. When that creeps in, you lose your program,’ ” Harvey said.
Harvey previously coached at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, which did not have as many of the resources that his school now has. He urges his athletes to appreciate what they have.
“We have the world here,” Harvey said. “The weather and everything, it’s just unbelievable. It’s a nice balance. Like OK, these are things we can do for you. We’re going to do these things. But we can’t allow entitlement (to) creep (in). Cal Poly taught me that.”
