Gator Pride: Mike Holloway Took Long Road To Build A Championship Program At Florida
Thursday, June 9, 2011 | Track and Field, Scott Carter
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Mike Holloway has spent more than half of his 52 years in this town, arriving here full of hope and fresh legs as a champion high school hurdler.
He enrolled at Santa Fe College and ran track, doing the same things he did all those years growing up in Ohio with his three brothers. They were a spirited bunch and life was full of competition and games.
His oldest brother played the drums. A younger brother was an all-state basketball player. Whatever they did, they played hard and played to win.
Holloway went his own way after high school. After he finished his track career at Santa Fe, Holloway became a young father when daughter Michele was born. Life suddenly took a more serious turn. All the fun and games faded into concerns about paying bills and raising kids.
Like a lot of young people his age, Holloway wondered where his life was headed.
“I ran track there for a couple of years and just kind of lost my way,'' Holloway said. “I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life. I brought [Michele] here; it was my job to take care of her. If I didn't get myself together and get a better position in life as far as a job, I wasn't going to be able to take care of her.
“She was my driving motivation.''
Still searching for direction, Holloway found it back at the track, the place he spent so much of his youth. He took an assistant coaching job at Gainesville High and later moved to Gainesville's Buchholz High.
“When I was a kid I thought I was going to be a lawyer,'' said Holloway, in his 16th season at UF and ninth as the men's track head coach.
High school assistant track coaches don't make a lot of money, and with Michele to support, Holloway later took over as head coach at Buchholz, turning it into one of the state's best.
Finally, he had carved out a road map for his future.
Still, Holloway had doubts about his long-term prospects in the sport. The success at Buchholz earned him a certain amount of respect in the track community, but with a growing family and no college degree, he faced hurdles much larger than those he once jumped over as an Ohio state champion.
Holloway was well aware of the UF track program and sent a few athletes from Buchholz into UF's program over the years. When Doug Brown took over the Gators in the mid-1990s, Holloway had by that time established some deep roots in the Gainesville track community.
Besides coaching, he announced at certain summer events at UF and even served as a clerk at the Florida Relays. He also was back in school at UF pursuing that college degree he started years earlier at Santa Fe.
A friend suggested that Holloway should give Brown a call to see if the veteran coach – Brown was at Tennessee prior to coming to Florida – would consider adding Holloway to his staff.
“I was still in school at the time,'' he said. “I didn't think they would hire me.''
Initially, that's what Brown told Holloway. He had another candidate pegged for the job and told Holloway to keep in touch.
A few weeks later, Holloway got a phone call that changed the direction of his career and his life.
“He called me one night and said the candidate was going to interview for another job and that if he did, he would hire me the next day,'' Holloway said. “And he did.''
Holloway joined Brown's staff as an assistant while completing school, graduating in 2000 with a history degree.
As a Florida assistant, Holloway worked primarily with sprinters, learning the difference in being a coach at the collegiate level compared to a high school coach. The thoughts of making his mark as a college coach started to fully blossom.
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The answer nearly floored Holloway.
Early in his career as an assistant under Brown, he asked one of his athletes a question.
“Wouldn't it bother you if you walked away from this program after three or four years here and we weren't very good?'' Holloway asked. The answer: “It wouldn't bother me at all.”
“That troubled me,'' Holloway said. “It told me there wasn't the pride in the program.''
The Gators experienced some success during the time Holloway spent as an assistant, and when Brown departed, Holloway applied to replace him. He had finally earned that history degree two years earlier and any aspirations to become a lawyer had been replaced by his quest to be a head track coach.
Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley had seen enough from Holloway to be convinced he was the right guy for the job.
“He had been a champion coach in high school and he had done some great things for us here,'' Foley said. “Being around him, you just had confidence. There is no crystal ball.
“The guy had a lot of success on his resume`. He's got a passion for what he does. It was a relatively easy decision.''
Holloway still remembers the interview vividly. He didn't know what to expect considering his abnormal path into college coaching and his lack of head coaching experience on the college level.
Whatever doubts he had when he walked into Foley's office quickly evaporated.
“It was a very interesting interview,'' Holloway said. “Jeremy told me he was hiring me. He said I'm going to hire you, you're going to make this much, and you will take the job. I said 'Yes, I will.' And it was done.''
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Holloway had another kind of interview with Foley five years later after the death of longtime women's track coach Tom Jones, a big loss for UF and the community.
Holloway wanted to ensure the program's growth remained on course with continuity, so he proposed taking over both the men's and women's program, a rare dual-role in the sport at this level.
Foley wasn't as easily sold this time.
“He had to convince me that it was the right thing to do,'' Foley said. “I thought it was a hard job and a lot of athletes and a lot of responsibility. He came in with a great game plan and showed me exactly what his plans were and how he was going to staff it and make it work.
“He's made it work.''
Holloway and the Gators are in Des Moines, Iowa, this week for the NCAA Outdoor Championships. The Florida men have won back-to-back Indoor national titles and are seeking to become the fourth school in NCAA history – USC, UTEP and Arkansas have done it – to win the Indoor and Outdoor national titles in the same season.
The Gators have finished second to Texas A&M the past two seasons.
It's a difficult task, one made more complicated on Wednesday night when sprinter Jeff Demps, the defending 100-meters national champ, didn't make it past his qualifying finals. That means others must elevate their performances.
Once upon a time, there would have been no chance for the Gators. That's not the case anymore, not with the program's talented roster and depth in so many events. Florida sent 17 men and nine women to the NCAA Championships.
“I'm determined that we're always going to be part of the conversation in the talk about national championships,'' Holloway said. “I just think that's the way it should be here. We still are in some ways perennial bride's maids.
“We weren't even challenging for titles [when I arrived as an assistant]. I don't think the teams back then realistically went to any competition thinking we were going to win a conference or national championship. When we get off the bus now, we know we're here to fight for a championship and we believe that. We're not cocky or conceited, but we're very confident at what we do and how we do things.''
The program's recent track record proves it.
“We've had pockets of success and obviously we have had some other quality coaches here,'' Foley said. “The SEC is a very, very good track league, and certainly with what he's done on a national stage, it's just taken us to another level.''
When Holloway takes time to reflect on his journey, it sure seems like the last 30 years have taken him much farther than a few miles across town. The young hurdler who showed up at Santa Fe now sees himself back then in his young athletes today.
They are now trying to find their way in life and sport the same way he tried. He lost his way for a while, but once he rediscovered it, there was no stopping him.
That is what keeps him motivated – that and those national championship trophies the program has collected of late.
“Is it satisfying to know that we're one of the better programs in the country? Yeah, it is,'' Holloway said. “But the most satisfying thing for me is watching the pride that runs throughout the program. It's very satisfying for me as a coach when a group of athletes and a group of coaches trust my vision and believe in what we do here.''
