Staff changes and a conversation with Paul Reneau

Vicky Pounds has taken over as distance coach for the Montana track and field program, Paul Reneau has been hired to coach the sprints and relays, and Matty Bennett has joined the staff as a volunteer assistant coach.

The changes and additions came about over the last several months as Director of Track and Field Brian Schweyen reconfigured his staff as he enters his ninth year leading the Grizzlies.

"I think we have a great staff," said Schweyen. "Everyone works really well together. I know it's cliché, but it's like a family. If there is dysfunction in the staff, the athletes see it and are affected by it.

"Having unity in your staff is imperative and a key to success. And not only does everyone get along, but everyone also does an incredible job with their athletes, which makes it that much better."

Adam Bork, who oversees Montana's jumpers and multi-event athletes, is in his 10th year as a full-time coach in the program, his 15th overall. David Paul begins his second year in 2016-17.

Pounds, now in her fifth year, split her time previously between distance athletes and the sprinters. She is now working exclusively with the distance runners, while Reneau takes over the sprints.

"You could label each of them as head coach of their area," said Schweyen, who joins Bork in coaching Montana's jumpers and multi-event athletes, plus the Grizzlies' javelin throwers. "Everyone knows what their role is and what needs to get done."

Reneau, who played football and ran for Montana in the early 80s and later competed at two Olympics in two different sports for his native Belize (see below), is the new name on Schweyen's four-assistant staff, but he's not a new face.

Reneau spent the last three springs as a volunteer assistant.

"When Vicky moved over to distance, it left a little bit of a hole in the sprints," said Schweyen. "Paul was the perfect person to fill it.

"He has an absolute passion for track and field, and for coaching. He has great knowledge, but he also has passion and excitement. That's why I wanted him on this staff and why he's a great addition. He loves what he's doing, so this is a dream job for him."

Bennett joined the staff this fall to assist Pounds with the program's distance athletes. He ran at Syracuse and spent the last three years volunteering at Virginia Tech while pursuing a master's degree in creative writing.

"I enjoyed teaching (freshman composition) at Virginia Tech, but I definitely enjoyed coaching more and started to see this as my career," he said.

"I was excited about this position because Vicky was very interested in my input and using some of the things I learned at Syracuse and Virginia Tech. We're collaborating on training plans. I was excited that she would be open to having that kind of discourse when it comes to training and racing."

The Montana cross country teams, under the direction of Pounds and Bennett, continue their fall season on Saturday at the Inland Empire Championships at Lewiston, Idaho.

The indoor track and field season opens Dec. 2 at Eastern Washington's Candy Cane IX meet.

A conversation with Paul Reneau

Paul Reneau was born in British Honduras, later moved to Los Angeles, was recruited to Montana to play football and run track, moved back to Los Angeles, then found his way back to Montana. Along the way he managed to compete for his home country at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea. This is his story.

GG.com: Where did this whole journey begin?

PR: I was born in the country of Belize. At the time I was born, it was British Honduras. Today they call it a growing country, but back when I was growing up, it was a third-world country. I grew up with shorts and pants with holes and nothing on my feet.

There was sugar cane and mangoes, fishing with no poles, people having stands around the city as their business. A whole lot of things you don't necessarily see in the States.

GG.com: What got you to the U.S.?

PR: My grandma moved to the States in the mid-60s. She put herself through nursing school and became a nurse in LA. She saved up money over the years and started moving us to the States, where there were more opportunities.

I moved to South Central LA when I was almost 13. It was a big change. I started school when gangs were first starting. The Crips were just starting, and the Bloods didn't even exist. The junior high school I went to was right in the heart of LA, probably a half mile from (USC), so I grew up a big SC fan.

GG.com: When did you get your start in sports?

PR: When I was growing up in Belize, we didn't have basketball or football as we know it here. I grew up playing soccer and cricket, flying kites and racing my buddies in the streets barefoot, not even knowing it was track.

When I got to the U.S., kids tried to get me to play sports, so I ran track. I started playing football my sophomore year of high school. I had never played it, but I became pretty good at it pretty quick. I was fast and coordinated, and all those pieces team sports require.

So I played soccer in high school, I played football in high school, and I ran track in high school.

GG.com: How did you end up at Montana?

PR: There was a guy who played football here, Bart Andrus. I found out he was partially responsible for getting me recruited. He went to my high school, but I had no idea who he was. He was there a couple of years before I was.

Bart and I became pretty good friends. We actually rode back to LA on holidays. He'd just drop me off and pick me back up when we were coming back. That's how I ended up here on a football scholarship.

GG.com: As a product of Belize and Southern California, what were your first impressions of Montana?

PR: It was an interesting time. I'd never seen snow before when I came up on my recruiting trip. There was a lot of snow on the ground. It wasn't snowing at the time, but it had recently snowed, so there were these big berms on the side of the road.

I was like, What are those things? They told me that when it snowed they had to plow the streets. That's how I learned what those were.

GG.com: You were recruited to play football, but you also ran track?

PR: At the time I didn't necessarily understand what I was getting into. It was more like, I want out of LA. Get me away from there.

I probably didn't put as much time into football as I needed to. I loved track, so in the spring I was on the track team. Football was just a second thought, and they allowed me to do it.

That hurt me in the fall. What I know now is that linear movement and lateral movement are very different. When it came fall, there wasn't a whole lot of lateral conditioning I'd done, so I was hurting my calf, I was hurting my groin, hurting my hamstring.

I look back now and think I probably should have participated in spring football and I would have been that much better come fall. But because I hadn't started playing football until my sophomore year of high school, my love for it wasn't the same as track.

Reneau finished fifth in the 100 meters at the 1984 Big Sky Conference outdoor track and field championships at Bozeman. Three months later he was racing against eventual gold medalist Carl Lewis in the opening heat of the same race at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

GG.com: How did that come about?

PR: Belize didn't have enough athletes to even have a trials, so from what I did in college, I was able to be on the team. There was me and one other sprinter. We had 12 or 15 athletes on the whole team. There was a marathoner. The rest of them were boxers and some cyclists. It was a small team.

It was pretty cool, because I was home. My mom, my grandma, my sisters, my aunt and lots of cousins were in LA at the time.

GG.com: The moment of a lifetime, and you weren't at your best?

PR: When I was here, we ran on an artificial surface. When I went back to LA for the Olympics, we weren't checked in to the (athlete) village. The training facility they ended up getting for us was Compton College, which had a cinder track.

I ended up hyperextending both knees while training coming out of the blocks. I couldn't even train when I got checked into the village. But I ran anyway. They would have had to cut my legs off for me not to run.

My best was around 10.4, so I think I could have advanced had I been healthy or been able to give it a better shot than I was able to.

GG.com: But still, it was the Olympics.

PR: There were 102,000 people at the Coliseum for our race. It was crazy. You're trying to keep it together, but then you walk out, and you're like, whoa.

GG.com: What is it like now when the Summer Games come around every four years?

PR: I'm a sucker for them, from opening to closing ceremonies. And I like to watch all the sports. It's the highest honor in sports. You don't get to see the best all at one time very often, but with the Olympics you're talking about the best of the best at the highest level.

I just go from channel to channel. It might be volleyball, beach volleyball, basketball, Greco-Roman wrestling, boxing, velodrome racing. Then when track and field comes on, I'm lost. I don't think there is anything as exciting in sports as watching track and field. Competition at its purest.

GG.com: You were able to compete at the highest level once, then you got to do it again?

PR: I ended up switching sports. Instead of being a runner, I became a cyclist. I became a sprinter on the velodrome. I had a lot of success right away. I ended up ninth out of 24 at the (1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis), and I went to the 1988 Olympics on my bike as well.

Korea's velodrome was African teakwood. It was the fastest thing I ever put my wheels on. That was a lot of fun.

GG.com: Do those experiences in any way influence your coaching three decades later?

PR: Each one was quite an experience, and I got to do it three times in international competition. They are a part of me and I have them in me as a coach. Being there as an athlete, I understand what it takes to train and do those things. Those are pieces I hope to give the kids.

I'm a stickler about learning and making sure kids understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. Instead of just going out and running 200s today, what does that mean and what are we trying to accomplish?

GG.com: What is it like watching Usain Bolt race?

PR: He has some things the shorter sprinters can do. Then you put those things with his height, and it's a beautiful thing to watch. I don't know if we'll see another athlete like him in our lifetime.

If he can get out of the blocks with the group, at 30 or 40 meters, it's done. If he gets out of the blocks terribly, at 60 or 70 meters, it's still done.

He has some of the things the shorter sprinters have, but because of his height, you can see the change in the ground he's covering. Leg speed just can't keep up with leg speed and leg length. It doesn't work that way.

GG.com: You earned a degree from UM in social work in 1984, took your future wife and headed back to LA. What did you do and how did you end up back in Montana?

PR: We moved to LA in January or February of '85 and got married in '88. My wife is from Great Falls, so our goal was always to get back to Montana. When and how that was going to happen, we had no idea.

I worked in a residential treatment center in the Pasadena area. You have kids with emotional and behavior problems, and sometimes they are so severe they can't function in the community, so they ended up with us.

The year after we got married, we moved to Seattle, so we were getting closer. We were here visiting my wife's parents at Christmas one year, and my sister-in-law was looking in the paper and goes, "Hey, here's a job for you."

Reneau was employed by Western Montana Mental Health Center and worked as a mental health counselor within the Missoula County Public Schools system from 1993 until last summer, when he joined Schweyen's staff on a full-time basis.

GG.com: How did you end up getting into coaching?

PR: My older son, Zane, was growing really fast. He kind of started losing coordination and balance, and was doing things kind of ugly. It wasn't a fun time watching him compete in anything. So it just kind of happened. I started coaching him when he was probably about 11, and it kind of went from there.

I started coaching soccer at Meadow Hill (Middle School) for quite a few years, then I started coaching track. I was at Meadow Hill for 14 or 15 years.

Then I ended up at Frenchtown (High School). That's where it kind of took off. For five years I was one of the assistants and for two years I was the head coach. All that time, I like to call it learning my craft. My goal was to learn everything I could, and I'm still on that path.

GG.com: Is coaching just an extension of teaching?

PR: It is just a different classroom. I like to call it my lab. It's a different platform for teaching, but it's teaching. I love watching the kids learn, and I love watching them put things into action.

Kids are pretty motivated to be really good at what they do. I want to help them do those things.

GG.com: What has it been like coaching at the college level the last few years?

PR: You look at high school and pretty much all they do is run them. There are some really good coaches out there, but in general, when I get a kid I pretend none of them have had any of this.

It's like Running 101. We start with the basics of how propulsion works and why it works. This is why we don't run on the tips of our toes. This is why we don't run with our feet flat. I'm reprogramming these kids who have either had bad programming or have never been programmed.

Sterling Reneau finished second in the 400 meters as a sophomore at last spring's Big Sky Conference outdoor championships at Greeley, Colo., and fifth in the 200 meters. He also advanced to NCAA regionals in the 400 meters.

GG.com: What has it been like coaching Sterling?

PR: Some people get to coach their kids when they're little. Some people get to coach their kids when they're in high school. Some people might get to be around their kids when they're in college. I've been able to do all of them.

I started coaching Zane when Sterling was 6 or 7, so he's been hearing me flap my lips about running and mechanics and workouts since he was little. He's got a lot of talent. I'm grateful I'm able to coach him.

GG.com: Sterling was at his best last spring, and Alex Mustard, who is also from Missoula, finished third in the 100 meters at conference and fourth in the 200 meters. Why do you think you're a good coach?

PR: Being a sprinter helps, but I'm also a student of sprinting. I understand that sprinting is not just about running. It's about teaching mechanics and understanding the physics of it, and getting kids to understand why we're doing things.

They put it into action so they can feel what it is we're doing, and then there is a connection between what I'm teaching them and the practical piece of it.

I think one of my strengths is not only understanding the science and physics behind it, but being able to get kids to learn it and put it out there in competition.

The way Sterling and Mustard were at the end of last season, that's my goal. You want to be flying at the end of the season, when it counts.

GG.com: What is your coaching style?

PR: I'm a relationship guy, I'm not a yeller and screamer. That relationship piece comes from my other job, when I needed to build relationships with kids who didn't have any idea of how relationships work.

My goal is to build the best sprint program in the Big Sky Conference, but that will only happen if kids trust in who I am. That's always the first piece I need to figure out. How can I best work with you? Because if I can't figure that out, none of the other stuff matters.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Alex Mustard

Sterling Reneau

Related Videos