Heading into his ninth season as head coach of the UC San Diego cross country programs, former Triton standout Nate Garcia will be looking to build on a strong 2014 campaign that saw his women's team reach the NCAA Division II Championships, while the men were represented at the same event by Tanner Collins. Garcia, a 2000 UCSD graduate in history and a four-year letterwinner in both cross country and track and field, took the reins of the cross country and track and field distance squads from Ted Van Arsdale in 2007 after having served as an assistant for the previous five seasons. With fall camp looming in roughly a month, he took time from a short summer break to talk about his sport, his program, and what 2015 might look like for the Tritons.
Q: Do you get more satisfaction watching your team run a good race than you did running one yourself as a collegiate athlete?
GARCIA: Obviously, putting up a strong race personally was a lot of fun, but I think that I get more satisfaction watching our team put together a good race. Being able to watch all the hard work they put in throughout the season, it's great to see it all come together on race day.
Q: You've been in the coaching ranks for 13 years and head coach at UCSD for the last eight. What was the biggest adjustment you had to make moving from assistant to head coach?
GARCIA: Well, as an assistant, I was pretty confident that I knew everything, so once I became a head coach, it was definitely humbling to realize that there is a lot about this profession and sport that I did not yet know. There is definitely a different level of pressure that comes with being the person responsible at the end of the day.
Q: What is one thing you do better now than you did eight years ago?
GARCIA: I think that I listen better than I did then. I was pretty confident that I could figure out what each athlete needed and because of that, I sometimes wouldn't listen as closely as I should have to what they were saying. I have definitely tried to improve in that area, and I think we are better as a team now in part because of that communication.
Q: Last year, for the first time since 2010, both the men's and women's teams were represented at the NCAA Division II Championships. What makes that so difficult?
GARCIA: We are both blessed and cursed to be in one of the best regions in the nation for cross country. The level of competition that we face just to get out of our region, while it toughens us up, also makes it difficult to advance to the championships. Every year there are top-25 teams nationally from the West that sit at home while the championship race is being run.
Q: As an alum of UCSD and its cross country program, do you have an advantage when it comes to relating to and motivating the UCSD student-athlete?
GARCIA: I think my experience here as a student-athlete gives me a leg up in understanding the pressure that our students are under to perform not only athletically, but in the classroom as well. I think that we occupy a pretty unique space in Division II, where our student-athletes are dealing with pressures that their competitors don't face. I hope that my experiences allow me to best guide them in handling this pressure.
Q: How would you characterize the culture of Triton Cross Country? What are you most proud of?
GARCIA: I think that the cross country (and track) team has a very close-knit culture that is very supportive of one another, which I think is great and crucial for success. I have been very proud of the way that our team has embraced Triton spirit, being involved with athletic department events and supporting the other teams on campus.
Q: You ran for and coached with long-time Triton head coach Ted Van Arsdale. What did you admire about Ted as a coach and person, and what parts of his style have you tried to integrate into your own philosophy?
GARCIA: There is so much about the way that Ted handled things that I really respect. There are definitely aspects of his personality that I have tried to embrace with varying levels of success. He is extremely patient and is largely unconcerned with what other people think of him as long as he knows that he is doing the right thing. Both of these are areas that I really respect and have strived to do better with personally. These characteristics enabled his student-athletes to really respect and trust him. I think that his humility often caused his knowledge, skill and success to be underestimated by people outside of our program, but he never seemed to measure his self-worth in what personal accolades he could acquire. This is probably something that we could all do better with.
Q: You also coach the distance squad for the UCSD track and field teams. What are the differences, from a coaching perspective, between the two sports?
GARCIA: Track is so much more controlled and measurable. Going into races, you can pretty confidently predict what the people around you are going to do and what skills or tactics you need to bring in to play to be successful. In a cross country race with sometimes literally hundreds of competitors and such a wide variety of terrain challenges, it becomes much more a matter of responding to the course, setting, and competitors.
Q: What is your recruiting philosophy? In the sport of cross country, do you pursue recruits based more on performance, or potential?
GARCIA: I always tell prospects that we aren't focused on recruiting fast high school runners, but instead individuals who will be fast here at UCSD. There is a specific type of individual who can be successful in this environment, and it doesn't matter how fast you were in high school. If you can't manage the running/school/life balance required here at UCSD, you won't be successful. This is what we are looking for when we are searching for future Tritons, talented individuals who are willing to put in hard work in a team-oriented environment. If we have that, I know that they will get faster while on our team.
Q: How would you describe yourself as a runner? Are you still active in that capacity?
GARCIA: I am a seasonally-recreational runner. Each summer I get pretty committed to training and usually put in 10-12 weeks of solid training, solid being relative to it being 15 years since my last real race. Once the season gets started, I will usually get out on the trails a couple times a week, but my personal training doesn't seem that important to me anymore once the team is in action. I'll often do the same in the interim between the cross country and track seasons.
Q: Your wife, Kate, is also a former UCSD runner. When you go home, does she ever offer any words of wisdom or advice concerning your coaching?
GARCIA: Kate has been hugely supportive of my role at UCSD. There is no way that I would be successful in this job without her help. She is a great sounding board, and there have been countless times that I come home frustrated with a situation and she helps talk me through it and come to a reasonable solution. She loves spending time with the team, and they seem to really like having her around.
Q: With UCSD's 23-sport program, you're surrounded by a wealth of high quality coaches. Is there anyone on the current staff that you find particularly interesting in terms of their approach? Anyone who's given you helpful counsel?
GARCIA: As a UCSD alum, I know how valuable it is to use available resources. I don't think that there is a coach on our staff whose brain I haven't picked at one point or another. There is so much knowledge, experience and success in our department, that I have been able to learn a lot from each of them.
Q: Outside of the running and coaching world, what are some of your interests?
GARCIA: I really enjoy sports of pretty much every sort, and can get into watching just about anything competitive. I also enjoy working on cars when I get the opportunity, though time and energy is definitely a limiting factor there.
Q: Your 2015 men's team was looking like it might be positioned to build on its solid performance in 2014, but recently, it was made public that two of the top senior runners, Tareq Alwafai and Scott Acton, would be redshirting. That leaves you with a much younger, less experienced squad. What are your expectations?
GARCIA: We will be without five of our top seven from last year, but our men who were in the 8-12 spots last year were really solid, and I anticipate that given this opportunity to step up, they will handle themselves well. Seniors Daniel Franz and Eddie Carrillo will lend some good leadership on race day, and our sophomores and juniors who proved themselves well last year in both cross country and track, will be joined by a really talented group of incoming men who I anticipate will be able to make an immediate impact. I am not sure yet what that will look like relative to the rest of the CCAA, region and nation, but I am excited to see what these guys can do in a year that many people will be counting them out.
Q: On the women's side, you'll be returning a veteran nucleus that includes seniors Paige Hughes, Corinne Hinkle, Marie Diaz and Chandler Colquitt. Is this group capable of challenging for the CCAA championship this fall?
GARCIA: We are really excited about the team that we will be able to field this season. Our women were strong last year in cross country, and then took a really good step forward this past track season, and we are planning to carry that momentum into the 2015 cross country campaign. These returners, along with a pair of juniors coming off of redshirt seasons last year (Ella Verhees and Raélene deArmas), and a talented incoming group, make for a pretty formidable team. As far as the CCAA title goes, Chico State has won for the past seven years, so until I see otherwise, they remain the heavy favorite, but I do think that we have the ability to finish higher than our fourth-place effort from last season, and if things go right, challenge for the title in San Francisco in October.
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