Masters Alliance
9th Dan BlackBelt and Olympic Gold Medalist Herb Perez visit with the best and brightest to bring clarity to the future of Martial arts.
Masters Alliance
Kerfuffles, Catawampuses, and Snobby Gosters: A Taekwondo Tale
In our inaugural guest episode, we dive deep with Dan Lewis, a geologist-turned-data analyst who's revolutionizing how we understand Taekwondo trends in America. Lewis shares shocking statistics about USA Taekwondo's decline - participation has dropped from over 7,000 competitors in 2019 to just 4,500 today, with some regions seeing a devastating 75% decrease in athletes.
What makes this conversation particularly compelling is the financial paradox Lewis uncovers. While USA Taekwondo sits on unprecedented cash reserves of nearly $1 million, junior development programs crucial for Olympic success remain woefully underfunded. The data paints a clear picture: American Taekwondo athletes peak around age 13, then participation plummets just as international competitors are winning Olympic medals at 16-19 years old.
We explore how constant changes to competitive pathways, rising event costs, and questionable regional structures have contributed to widespread disillusionment. Lewis's analysis of World Championship results from 2011-2023 reveals no meaningful improvement in American performance, challenging official narratives of program success.
This eye-opening conversation exposes the disconnect between organizational wealth and athlete development. If you care about the future of American Taekwondo or want to understand how data can reveal truths that official statements might obscure, this episode is essential listening. What changes would you make to fix our broken development system?
Welcome back to the Warehouse 15. And this is our third attempt today because we're having technical issues. I'm not sure that TJ paid the internet bill, but we're going to be okay with that.
Speaker 1:I'm working on it now. Working on it now.
Speaker 2:As we said before, we're here and this is our inaugural episode with our first guest ever, and I couldn't think of anyone better to have as a guest, and it was at the suggestion of my colleague and good friend, coach Moreno, so I'm going to let him introduce him, but before we get started, you know, my understanding is he hasn't signed the waiver, so I'm going to raise his right hand and he promises to tell the truth to the best of his ability and not to get offended by anything that TJ or I indefinitely will say, and if so, he will accept the apology of sorry, not sorry.
Speaker 3:I agree to one of those.
Speaker 2:All right, good as long as we get one of them, we can negotiate Sorry, not sorry, all right, no, mr Lewis. Yeah, mr Lewis, all right. No, coach you're up.
Speaker 4:Yeah, mr Lewis, first of all, thank you for coming on the show, and it's interesting because we've kind of got a little bit of a buzz with this little threesome that we've kind of got going here. No, did he Threesome?
Speaker 2:I knew it Hold on a second Hold on A grouping of three people talking about Let me wrap myself up a little bit. It's going to get a little chilly in here.
Speaker 4:No, but we've had a lot of people want to come on the show, so we were talking about it and I don't know. I just thought you would be a great first guest. Just because of some of the things that we see in social media, I think there's a lot of things that we really agree on and there's some things that we don't agree on. But, um, yeah, so we we're really happy to have you. So thank you very much for for you know, spending some time with us today. So well, you know how this goes. We have a lot of fun. We, you start here and we go there and we just keep it loose. So, uh, thank you very much for coming on thanks, I'm looking forward to some friendly disagreement no more agreements and disagreements.
Speaker 4:Believe me, believe me, but uh tj, what's up with you bro?
Speaker 1:I'm just chilling. I'm just chilling just here in North Carolina hanging out. Like I said before, I'm super excited for this episode. I know as one of the people that I talk the most Taekwondo with. It's always nice to have those deep conversations about Taekwondo and everything. So it'll be kind of cool to kind of get the fact side of everything kind of really know what we're looking at so excited welcome and let's do this.
Speaker 4:Why don't you, why don't you start off by just giving us a quick little background? You know I know we got a lot of subjects to get into, but tell us you know a little bit about yourself. I know your daughter and your wife were involved in the martial arts with taekwondo.
Speaker 3:But give us a little background yourself real fast, okay I'm a geologist by training, spent 20 years finding gold mines all around the world, buying, buying them, selling them. Then I spent about a decade doing the same thing with geologic hazards, evaluating their risks and stuff. So a lot of evaluation, a lot of number crunching, and so that leads me to a lot of hobbies that I have. I do this with climate data and stocks and population trends and all that stuff, but also Taekwondo Got into Taekwondo when I married my wife in 2014. She had a 13-year-old daughter, who you mentioned Summer, who was really into Taekwondo. So we dove in with everything we had for the next half dozen years and had a super enjoyable time. I started doing analysis and that led us to I made lots of comments on I think it was a site called Taekwondo Edge. I made a lot of comments and got in a big fight with Steve McNally of USAT.
Speaker 4:Who's that? No, no, no, come on.
Speaker 2:Is that the OxyClean guy?
Speaker 3:Doesn't he sell OxyClean, that's not him, I have been Something like that. So then we opened our own site, our own Facebook page, called WTUSAT Data and Facts, and we've been going full steam ever since then, 2019.
Speaker 4:I got a question just real fast off the top, before we get into more details, like how long does it take you to come up with this, like, with all these numbers and all these stats? I mean, is it about, like, is it difficult to get that information? Because obviously for stocks and for weather and stuff like that, it seems like maybe that would be a little bit more ready. But man for Taekwondo, I don't know how you get all this stuff so quickly.
Speaker 3:Well, it can be a real challenge, and certain places are more challenging than others, and I'll just throw this out right now. For example, adu is impossible because they don't have any data that they're sharing. I've asked for it and they say, oh yeah, we'll get that to you, but not happening. But USAT, I just download as much as I can off the various sites and you know, I actually do a huge amount of data entry myself, which takes most of the time, especially when it's, you know, big events like Worlds or Grand Prixs and there's all those different countries involved. So it just takes a lot of time. You know, the thing that takes the most time is when we do scoring analysis and we select a whole bunch of matches of the Olympic weight classes at all these events and then we analyze where all our scoring came from. That takes a huge amount of time and so we don't do it very often.
Speaker 4:I mean I know. I mean, obviously, you know I work for the country of Brazil right now. We have, you know, one of our guys that does that. So we know when we get, for example, we get ready for big games. You know the Olympics, pan American Games, where the draw is pretty much set. We have, I mean, right leg, left leg, what time of the round they score most often with, and what do they do when they're winning, what do they do when they're losing?
Speaker 4:I mean, sometimes I think it's a little bit too much, but I guess you know you can never have enough, but it's. I know that it takes a lot of time and you know, know we're doing it for you know four divisions for men and four divisions for women with, like you know, a very limited number of athletes. We know when you're looking at the olympic games, so it's a lot easier, but I I can imagine they'd be very painstaking. You know time consuming and especially if you're just trying to get the videos off of. You know the internet or whatever the case may be. But exactly.
Speaker 3:And then one last thing is you. I also take a look at USAT's financials, and maybe later we can make a comment about that.
Speaker 2:I would love to. Oh, I didn't really have financials.
Speaker 4:Any quick questions, mr Perez, off the top of your head.
Speaker 2:No, I think you know we did a little bit of research and we have some ideas and questions, and I think that your data is always influential and correct and always revealing and thought provoking. So I think we're ready to go and get into some of this, because I know it's hard to do that kind of work. But, more importantly, it talks to trends which I think you're good at illuminating.
Speaker 4:Thank you. I'll start with this. Maybe just an open-ended question. Like why, why? Why do this? For take one? I know it was a hobby, because not many people stay around once their kids take off, right, I mean, they just it's, it's, it's not important to them anymore. But you've stayed around for a number of years, know years, you and your wife and I know you're fans. But like why, why dive into so much?
Speaker 3:uh, that's a great question and I get asked that by my wife all the time you know, we enjoy it.
Speaker 3:We invested, uh, blood, sweat and tears and treasure for half a dozen years, uh, with our daughter and know it basically was almost the equivalent of a college education price-wise. So you know, when she dropped out in 2019, and she dropped out because you know she had the ultimate successful failure in the sense that in 2019, she was the alternate on the US World Team, the Pan Am Games Team and the World University Team, so you know, three strikes and she decided she was out. But we did not want to give up. We actually really love this sport, even though sometimes I make fun of ourselves and it's just. You know, it's a niche sport that I think there's fascinating information about. The people are wonderful, with the exception of one or two people here and there. We love everybody and you know, uh, the us open is frequently in vegas or, more recently, reno, so it's easy for us to travel to yeah, yeah, td, you get you up.
Speaker 4:I can keep going, but I'm just listening.
Speaker 1:I'm listening. I think I think all of us, but I know I've had some. I had a chance to actually be in some of the training sessions with your daughter and she spent some time with the WCAP guys. I've actually been at your house before, as I remember, so that's kind of a longer story. But no, I think, like for me at some point I would like, if we're just talking about things we want to go over and talk about, I mean I want to. I'm always interested in, like the correlation between the cadet and junior and moving on to senior success and all that stuff like that. So we had a chance. I'd like to. I mean, you know, I know you probably have it in front of you or maybe you can pull it up a little bit, but just because I think last episode we were talking about was it the coaching aspect more, was it nature versus nurture, that whole thing. I think that's a good little kind of statistics to add to that whole conversation.
Speaker 4:That's good. Let me ask you this like what do you? I mean, recently you've had two big topics like number one, the decline in the um in the usa, texas organization, as far as their numbers, um, and then, of course, you know you, I think maybe even a little bit before that, if I'm not mistaken you talked about the age of the olympic athletes and the and the and the performances, the medal performances of those athletes as well, like you're, you know what. Give us a brief overview of your, of your data as far as it pertains to, like the numbers within taekwondo, within the usat okay, well, you're right, I did a couple recent things, uh, and I'm trying to pull up old data and I even yeah I lose my own data because it's on a different computer and it it dies on me.
Speaker 3:So you know there's a lot of recreation of information. But you know, you probably remember I'm just going to hold this chart up. Look at that chart right there. That's ages of taekwondo athletes, older ones over here, and they peak around age 13 and then they just plummet off in terms of competition and so that here, Is that in the United?
Speaker 4:States. That's in the.
Speaker 3:United States, that's in 2019. You know there's 800 competing early cadets and youth, and then it drops off radically at each step to juniors, and then seniors, of course, just plummet through the floor. So that's the challenge that you guys have talked about and we have here and uh, probably other countries have as well, but maybe not as pronounced so. And then in usa is usat, uh, even with on top of that trend where, with eight year, people age out and select themselves out, uh, there's this uh big shift over the last half dozen years and some of that might be the sorry, not pandemic pandemic and you know where participation dropped off by almost half. A lot of clubs, I understand, closed. You know Dojang's just went away. People gave up, parents, athletes gave up, but they're coming back, and so that all shows up at Nationals and US Open and also in this recent thing where USAT is trying to get their regions organized.
Speaker 3:So we took a look at the whatever it was seven or eight regions that they suggested, and there's this grossly disproportionate number of athletes in each region. So we suggested you might want to shift that. And then we also looked at you know, I had that same data for 2019 versus this last year, 2024. And the numbers are just staggering. You know, in 2019, we had, you know well over 7,000 competitors and now we're like 4,500, including color belts, and in some areas like the Midwest and the Great Plains states, uh, the numbers are down by 75 percent. So it's down everywhere.
Speaker 4:But uh, really bad there, I can't explain let me, let me ask you this I mean just, I mean again, it's I know it's not data per se, but like for example okay. So from that, when you say 17 to 17, now right that was 19 so six, okay, so 19, 19 to now.
Speaker 4:And, yes, the pandemic was in there and that hurt a lot of people, but the martial art business industry is back up, it's, it's rebounded. I mean, people are doing extremely well. So there's people there, but they're just not coming back. And so my question and maybe this is just again, it's not facts, but like what, do you have an idea of what, what, what that could be contributing to? Because, listen, you, you've heard us on this on this show and I'm going to say it again this the current administration has been basically been in step since 2018, 2017, you know, some coaches were hired, a new CEO was hired, and so that's over their tenure, and it's tank, tank, tank.
Speaker 4:And so, you know, my thing is, of course, I can give everybody a strike or a mulligan for the, for the pandemic, but after that, where? Why? Why hasn't there been an increase? Is it because of the disarray? Is it because of the changing of the system? Is it because the changing of the selection procedures? There's got to be something that we can point it to. But what is your best guess?
Speaker 3:You gave a really good list there that I think all are factors. I think there's a disillusionment with the way USAT changed their pathways. They call them, in fact, that was how I got in a big kerfuffle with Mr McNally back in the day I think it was in 2019, I ripped apart or actually sorry. I analyzed their pathways and suggested some improvements, and that led to World War VII. So the pathways keep changing.
Speaker 3:It's maybe a little less obvious now, but in the early part of that period you just talked about their tenure the pathways were specifically designed for specific athletes. You know they're what I call the black ops team, and then that became the, the academy, and now the academy is smaller than ever. It's it's secret still as to who's even on the academy, as at least aau tops and, uh, the ace team put had the pictures of their athletes on a website, so you knew who they were. You just have to sort of guess sometimes. So it's a big disillusionment. The prices have gone up for events. There's been complaints about that, uh, recently and, uh, you know, moving around to different parts of the country that aren't popular, like Reno for the US Open, even though US people showed up. The Europeans and the Asians hate it.
Speaker 3:It's going to hurt.
Speaker 4:I mean, listen, as it pertains to the US Open, for me, I think the United States has to do a better job of international relations, and you know, me and Master Perez have talked about that with one of their fearless leaders, because, listen, we're not the only game in town anymore, there's Opens everywhere and there's good Opens everywhere. So before people rushed to the US Open because it was a premier event, but not anymore, it's just another event. Could it be a good event? Could it be a great event?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:But right now you might as well go to Canada, you can go to Mexico, you go to Rio, you go to Dominican Republic. If you're just trying to get points, you don't really have to run over to this G2 anymore because they're everywhere. So I think USA Tech Wando better, you know, have some better relations to get some of these big teams over if you want to keep that level up. If not, it's going to be, in my opinion, a canada, united states and mexico open. That's what it's going to be and don't forget brazil brazil will come.
Speaker 4:We didn't come this year because we had our team trials the week after, so it just wasn't. It didn't line up. But yeah, and probably most likely in the in the future. You know it's a, it's a big tournament and it's worth a lot of points early in the year.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I'm sure we'll, we'll be yeah, there's, and you're right about the proliferation of g events and g2s. Uh, there's more g2s than ever. There's one this one this weekend, a huge one in holland, the dutch open uh yeah, 630 seniors signed up. So yeah, big, always a big tournament.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's one that's always a crazy, crazy historically.
Speaker 4:I was actually talking to one of my athletes. Today we talk about Michael Rodriguez and we were talking about watching it this weekend. That's the kind of nice thing we can kind of see it on live or on TV now on the internet. But I was telling him and we talked about this athlete, you guys, yes, last week about Clay Barber.
Speaker 4:I remember in the 90s, in the late 80s, clay used to always talk about the dutch open, in the copenhagen open, and at the time opens weren't important. It was just kind of a small thing and I'm like who cares? I mean who cares? But like now, you know that that term has been around the longest, it's the biggest, it's got the deepest field. I mean that's like a, a mini world championships, you know, I mean 60, 70 people in division, some, you know, top level athletes. You're not getting in many Asians, you know, or you know, but you're getting a lot of the European. Bulk of Europeans are definitely there. So, yeah, we're going to have to. I think the United States is going to have to do something to make our event a little bit more special. Have you ever been approached or asked by the USA Taekwondo to do any work for them to crunch any numbers for them, to assist them. You did this great thing on the regions, which I think we should talk about that a little bit, but have they ever contacted you for anything?
Speaker 3:Yes and no. So you know, sherman Nelson is, you know, a very talkative guy and he's asked for some free work. I'm not too interested in doing a lot of, you know, painstaking work for.
Speaker 2:He's a pastor, so he should understand the value of free work he should understand the value of free work Go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've listened to some of his sermons. I don't anyway the, so he's. You know he's reached out a little bit. I've talked to him. I would contract to them, if they wanted me to, to do some detailed work. You know, jay asked me last year to contribute to their World Taekwondo Improvement Committee so I sent him a bunch of data that actually did compile. And you know, I think it's reflected in the tenants that they want to try to improve on for 28 and beyond and that was mostly just scoring analysis and showing how much Gamjons were, you know, far too dominant as a scoring method. You know a quarter, nearly, you know 20% or so of points at these major events are from Gamjons and people just don't like that. That just ruins the viewing experience for so many. So you know. And then there's other coaches who say you know they should hire me but I'm not moving from here and you know it could be a piecemeal effort.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but I would say, obviously I think there's certain things that you've done already, just kind of just because you wanted to. That I think is very interesting and probably very helpful. Like the regional thing, because I know you you broke down the in a probably a more scientific way as far as the numbers, so it kind of made sense. So it was a little bit more what's the word equal, a little bit more balanced within the regions.
Speaker 3:Right, and California is its own almost country and they perform that way too, at the, the, at the, you know, nationals in particular, at all levels, cadets, juniors, seniors, well, especially the younger people, the cadets and juniors California really does extremely well, followed by, you know, new York, new York, texas and Florida. But you know, even with California is interesting because you know there's like five, six, 700 people that go to their state tournament and then they also go on to. You know there's like five, six, 700 people that go to their state tournament and then they also go on to, you know, other events around the country, like nationals and these they're calling them grand grand prix or finals, whatever they're called, the money raising efforts and so. But you know, cuda sent me a file, a spreadsheet of, you know, know, lots of information about the athletes. They withheld their names and ages, but I, they had zip codes so I could track them down by zip code as to where they were in the state and could.
Speaker 4:It hadn't even done that uh so so they thanked me very much for sending it back to them and so they could see where their uh athletes were coming from so I got a question for you because I mean this, this is I agree with in principle what you did, but, like, for example, I know, and I'm going back a couple of years in gymnastics and in wrestling, for example, there was hot beds um for those sports. Like, for example, in the Midwest in the eighties and early nineties the Midwest was the hot bed of of wrestling and but they didn't really worry about the other regions. Matter of fact, it's either you get better or you don't, and I think that eventually, for example, pennsylvania got good, california got good, all of a sudden these regions were forced to get better. And you see that a lot in American football, american baseball, American soccer, all this stuff.
Speaker 4:I mean there's always going to be these hotbed kind of they divide it up and they say you guys either either pick it up or you just stay behind forever. Do you do you? Do you think that's any good in that or do you think it's just better to do it? Because I think I'm mixing two things. If I'm just talking about performance, I'm almost like either you get better or you don't. If you're talking about regional training and trying to give people have a good balance all around the country. I think the statistics side makes more sense.
Speaker 3:I guess this year they're going to call it the all American open. There's going to be two of them, an East and a West, and you know, perhaps there should be, you know, three of those. There should be a, a true West, and then South.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they're allowing, like people that aren't even us citizens, to fight in that competition. So I don't really know what the point of that competition is what, what, what what the American? The American east open and west open. You don't have to be a citizen, you, but you can't go to nationals. You could fight the tournament, but you, yeah, I don't know, I don't get that. I'm pretty sure that's what it says, right?
Speaker 4:so I'm not making that. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:I did not know that right now so they're allowing people to fight the competition. For what reason? But this also leads into our pathways or whatever to make the national team get to national and stuff. That's weird. I guess I got one question, just um, and I guess we'll go back to that, but like I don't understand. So what's the point of the regions? Because I've read it and I don't like what. What is what are the regions supposed to do? What are we doing with the regions? I mean, that's for anybody. If you guys know, I don't know, I'll I'll venture an opinion.
Speaker 3:it's just, uh add, I'm very critical of it in general. I think it's just to add another layer of middle management as far as coaching and training and administration, and then it's really a money-making exercise. You have more events that people have to go to and it makes a lot of money. Usad has actually been very clever the last couple of years with how they raise money and how much money they're raising.
Speaker 1:They're extremely flush right now yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, we used to do regional. We had regional competitions. You know we had was it? Was it states, regionals, nationals? Right, I think we talked about this a little bit before, but we had those four, it was. Was it four regions before coach, do you remember? I?
Speaker 4:mean like, I would feel like it was something like that.
Speaker 1:But anyways, my point is that it made sense to have a. You had states who you had that medal or you had to get like top eight at states or top four at states and then get top four at this one. So it kind of all made sense and I just don't know the point of like we're making these regions to do what. Are we going to have a competition in those regions? Is that what they're trying? Is that what the point of it is? To separate, to have like a regional competition, as opposed to like state and then regionals of that area that they're putting it in.
Speaker 3:I assume I I listened to the uh podcast, uh, where, uh, mr n Nelson described it, and that was part of it was to yeah, part of it was to, you know, introduce region versus region competitions, which I don't think is going to go anywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Listen, I personally think that it's for show. It looks good, it kind of sounds good. We're going to break into regions but, like, if you get down to like the specifics, well, who's going to come? What's it going to do? Why should I go? Why should I invest money into that when the pathway is over it? Just like you said, it's layers of middle management. It sounds good. I think you I think maybe it was in your yeah, you're you and your wife's's little podcast thing that you put you said it's not going to work. The way it's structured it's not going to work. I mean, from the coaching all the way down.
Speaker 3:And I was kind of like I thought that was a bold statement because it's not going to work, because the plan and the structure of it won't let it work Right. Yeah, you're right, it was a little controversial, we share our opinions, as well as data and facts. I actually got a. I got a call that night from my coach in Europe who said man, if I tried that, I'd get shot. So it's.
Speaker 2:It resonated in some places, give them time.
Speaker 3:So you know it's. And then, of course, there's the elephant in the room where they basically excluded you guys on purpose Say we're going to invite everybody in except for these guys over here. So that's offensive. I think it's extremely counterproductive. If you're not involving all the best people, then what's the?
Speaker 4:point. It's not just us. I mean, there's a lot of good coaches out there that I think that you know, just for whatever reason, if they're not in the end, they're not kissing the ring, they're not running out to North Carolina and that they're being transparent. And, like you said, you don't even know who's at their academy. To exclude high-level athletes and high-level coaches, to actively work against them is just strange, which is? It brings me to an interesting point, because I'm gonna just use the GB model.
Speaker 4:The GB model was individual coaches for maybe two or three athletes or even weight categories. That's their model. They came up with it, and now it's just the opposite. It's like everyone together do what we say or don't be involved, like you would think that they would say I mean, it sounds self-serving, coach Jennings, you work with X, y and Z. They made the national team let's bring you guys in so we can all have our best performance, instead of saying get out of there, we'll take them and let's see what we can do with them. And they're not moving out there, they don't have funds for you, they can't bring you to out there to train, like it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you know.
Speaker 1:And so when I hear about this regional thing, and you know all these little- if they can't do it at the top, that's where maybe I should go with that. If they can't do it at the top, what makes me think they're going to do it at the middle level? You know? Yeah, excellent point. Yeah, I think you guys made a good point when you brought up the whole. What were the three words? I think was like synergy. Uh, what were the three words of judgment they were choosing to to tell people that that's who they wanted to work with?
Speaker 1:yeah, it was integrity, uh synergy and uh coalition or some word like coalition those are some tough words, but like even that, and it's even that in itself, like who writes that? Like what, what? How do you as a company, as an organization, say this is what we're going to pick this off of, we're going to, we're going to say who has these three things?
Speaker 2:well, that, was that was written by the communist party. Actually, if you had synergy with us, if you had integrity. If you didn't, then it meant you got to understand what they're saying. If you're not part of us, then you lack integrity, you lack synergy, you lack qualifications. That's what the you know. So you got to remember.
Speaker 2:Mcnally is a snake oil salesman. He came from a background that had no, he has no history in sport. He has no education in sport. He didn't attend the memos program to develop sport leaders. Bob Gambardello did, I did and a number of others have and in that program they teach you how to build NGB support systems and pipelines. That's not training that McNally's had McNally and, by the way, neither did Jay Warwick. So neither Jay nor McNally have the training, the requisite training, to build a pipeline. Jay, in his experience in the USOC, does have it, which is interesting because he was one of the guys who oversaw the most unsuccessful portfolios of the USOC, not the successful ones. So when I was on the USOC, not the successful ones. So when I was on the USOC board of directors, I oversaw eight sports that were successful.
Speaker 2:Jay's history has been as a portfolio manager for them. He had the unsuccessful sports and he's carried that over into Taekwondo with McNally. His background was a PR guy. Hey, mate, everything's okay, don't worry, don't look over here, don't look at this hand and don't worry where my other hand is, just worry about this hand over here. So he's the master of deception and so, yeah, they're not looking for that. So when he says I've had numerous conversations with him where he's intimated to me about the integrity of individuals, on this phone call currently, right now, and in the organizations and he does what they do now, he says oh, I can't tell you what it is, but just don't associate with them any longer. I can't do the right Australian accent or not even sure he's from Australia, but I think he's from England.
Speaker 2:He missed the boat to Australia but unfortunately found a boat here and brought two of his friends. So I don't want to digress, but I think the work. A boat here and brought two of his friends. So I don't want to digress, but I think the work that you're doing is amazing. The question, I think, becomes what do you see? What do you? What do you see the use of the data for? Forget about the organization because it's clear they're not going to do anything with it what? How can coaches or athletes use the data to their benefit, and to what end goal?
Speaker 3:Well, that's a really good question.
Speaker 2:That was actually Juan's question. I stole it.
Speaker 3:I get feedback, especially at events like the US Open and a few other things we go to, from parents in particular, and also coaches. A lot of coaches come up and express their gratitude for just compiling information, because it's not always easy to find whether it's from a specific event and who did what the brackets sometimes brackets are very hard to find and also with parents in particular, they don't know a lot of the rules. You know, in WT or USAT, the difference in points between those two things. How to you know what should a cadet be doing to prepare for juniors and on to seniors and should they bother, and all that? Uh, what about going to college? You know, etc. So get a lot of feedback and it's it's, you know the feedback I get is positive because nobody's nobody really comes up to me and, you know, swears at me and say I hate you.
Speaker 3:Uh, although I'm sure they're out there and it uh, it's, it's just the volume of information, not all of it is going to stick you. You know I basically have a throw it against the wall approach and some of it, you know, falls completely flat, gets, you know, almost nobody looking at it, and that's some of the work I actually really like, but other stuff, it does make an impact and it's really about just information, information sharing the rules, you know. And then it's frustrating when things are not transparent. You said the word transparent. Things are not transparent, whether it's, you know, meeting minutes, which are just non-existent in some cases or they just stop years in the past. The financials, which I mentioned they're hard to find and and even harder to understand, uh, and most people don't go into that, but you know I, I do. But, uh, you know, athletes, you know it's mainly parents that give me the, the feedback that they then pass on to their coaches of all things and their their athlete students have you got?
Speaker 4:have you? Have you had anybody from? I think this would be a great business for you, like if you could come up with a format like listen for X amount of dollars. I will break down your data-wise, like your kid's performance, scoring performance, defensive performance, right leg, left leg. You know what I'm saying? Like kind of what I talked about with the Brazil people. It's just here's a profile for your athlete over these five matches or whatever, and if they ever got better, you could say, if you want me to do it for your competitors, I could do the same thing. And I mean I'm surprised someone hasn't, because it does make a difference If you could.
Speaker 4:You know what we did in Brazil. People like, oh, I scored, I scored, I scored my cut kick all the time. And we're like do you? And then we went back and we're like you don't, you think you do because you use it and they didn't realize it, you know. And maybe just in the eyesight, you're like, yeah, he cuts all the time, he's real good with that, but actually he scores with the back leg 63 percent of the time, you know. So it's interesting what people think they do until they actually have that raw data in front of them right and you know I have not done that.
Speaker 3:I I don't, it wouldn't be worth my while, I don't think, and people wouldn't want to pay what it might cost, okay. But you know, a couple things you said really stuck with me where you think that you know, some people think that this is what's going on, uh, and then of course there's a layer of is the equipment working? And we see it all the time at events where the first day you know, know the equipment isn't working and so you know it surprises me sometimes that the athletes don't change their tactics. You know, in the second or especially third round, if there's a third round where you know either data and sometimes even KP and P, the body gears, it's not working. You got to go to the head, you got to punch, you got to gamjong.
Speaker 4:And you know, people, people, they just don't really coaching, coaching, coaching. Yeah, coaching, coaching, I gotta. I'm sorry, guys, if I'm dominating this thing, because I got all kinds of questions. Like you said something about the financials, like you said there was flush, so I'm thinking, okay, that's pretty good. So then my question maybe you can kind of get into that a little detail but if it's so good, why not support the cadets, why not support the juniors, why not support the senior national team to come out for training camps and things like that? I mean I know you can't answer that because it's not yours, but how, how flush is it? I mean, well, they're making money it's.
Speaker 3:It's really flush for a few different reasons and I I'm actually going to do some analysis and post it sometime in the next week or whatever, but whatever. But they're adding these events, the finals and those regional events, and then I think they increase fees, the amount they're making. The most recent data we have is from 2023, which is not off their website. It's off one of these nonprofit trackers that have the most recent financial information, so I had to go there to get USAG data. But in 23, they set a record where the most money they've made from the US Open and Nationals and these other events they organized. It was like $2.2 million, whereas normallya high year was like $1.8. So there's like $400K right there.
Speaker 3:The fees registration fees I think had gone up a little bit. The numbers have increased and so they were making around $700,000 a year. It fell off during the pandemic. Now it's back up to close to $560,000 in 23. And then in 24, at their July board meeting they had a financial presentation which is poorly described, but basically they had at that point $900,000 in the bank, where $600,000, $700,000 ahead of budget because of increased participation and not sending the teams really anywhere because they're waiting for the Olympics. That's continued. They haven't been shipping people off in the second half of the year. That's continued. They haven't been shipping people off in the second half of the year. So I think they're sitting on. I would guess and I have to finish the numbers, but you know well over a million in cash, uh, 1.2, some number like that. What do you think it would cost to send cadets to worlds this year?
Speaker 2:to 200 000. No, it's a hundred hundred.
Speaker 4:Well, there's 10 of them. There's 10 of them. There's 10 of them, and it is a long tournament. There's 10 of them and it is a long tournament, so it's a little bit more than a normal, but yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:But they're doing what I call blue sky budgeting right, so everybody can make a profit if you don't pay your expenses. So if you don't fulfill your mission and their mission is to to equip and send teams to get international experience, to develop a pipeline that can perform and put people on the medal podium when you don't do that and you keep that money in the bank, then you're cash rich, result poor, and you're doing what I call blue sky budgeting. And I had a long history in city government and, quite frankly, on the USOC's board of directors in budgeting. And when you look at the budget per plan and then the expenses per plan and you see that they're not doing the plan and they're not expending the money per plan, then you get blue sky budgeting. So if I need to make my numbers look better, I simply start cutting and saving and saving. You can cut and save on certain things, but you can't cut and save on the core mission and what it sounds like they're doing. One of their core missions is to fill the pipeline and that would be giving juniors experience and funding their ability to participate when you have a national championship or a team trials where people don't show up. They don't show up because they've given up. And when you have blue sky budgeting, they don't show up because they've given up.
Speaker 2:And when you have blue sky budgeting, you're paying the salaries of the clown car. And there's enough people in the clown car. It starts with Jay and Steve and now Sherman and anybody else that's willing to drink the Kool-Aid. Yet you have athletes outside the gates of the bourgeois sitting there going just a piece. Let them eat cake. And these poor athletes that are out there looking like little miss les miserables. You know, peasants can't get to an event because jay and steve are going and doing the world taekwondo improvement foundation.
Speaker 2:I got some. I got a clue for world taekwondo. Bring taekwondo back and that'll be your improvement. Not that hard to do. Change the rules, but the blue sky budgeting would be interesting to see. And the question is going to become at what point do the facts be true, betray the, the appearance of what some people think the truth is? And once you do learn the truth, do the masses arise and take care of business, which is fire McNally, get rid of Jay, get rid of Sherman, get rid of the clown show, empty the clown car and get a pickup like like TJ drives around in Kentucky or wherever he's living.
Speaker 4:Listen, I hope you do get that. You know that kind of financial stuff and it'd be interesting because I think that people always listen. I'm a businessman, we're all business people and we want to. We want to make money. I'm all for people making money, I'm all for paying people what they're worth.
Speaker 4:But I think there always has to be, when you have a, a non-profit organization like this, you know and you gotta, you gotta take care of your athletes. And if there's that much money and they can't bring the cadet kids together to train, to bring the junior to train, if they can't do it, what are they doing with that money? Who's getting that money? Because that's just to me, that's just that's unacceptable. If there's a million dollars sitting around somewhere, if there's 500,000, if there's 200,000, you should be spending on some of these young kid athletes so that there's incentives.
Speaker 4:I talked to a kid the other day. My whole TJ knows your dream was to make a national team. One of the carrots was you make the national team. They provide for you, they take care of your stuff. Now I'm like I'll go to these opens and get a medal here or there and get a wild card. The us team has almost been broken because there's no incentive for these kids. The parents got to pay their way anyway. I'd rather go with my mom, dad and my coach versus go over there, you know.
Speaker 1:So it's just I hope that if you could produce those things or give some kind of light, that would be really interesting for people to see I just don't, like I said, like I said in the beginning, I don't know how we don't see that as being important, like, how are the juniors not like, how is that not a funded, like a funded trip, a funded team, a of individuals? Like? That's my part. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense If the goal is and we talk about how, the turnover right now and the age and how fast they become Olympian Olympic medalists and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Because I think I made a comment on one of the other ones, when I was trying to make the national team, I was sitting behind 27, 28-year-olds, they year olds, they were adult men and I'm coming in at 16, 17, 18, so it's a little bit of a different vibe. But these kids are now making the olympic team and getting olympic medals at 16, 17, 18 on on a normal rate. It's like the yeah. So so my question is how, how is that like? How is that not important?
Speaker 2:well, this is like we almost have to be. This is a kerfuffle that's turned into a catawampus, and when you understand that, then everything else is going to make sense.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, when you allow ultra crepidarians to run the organization, you're bound for a kerfuffle wrapped in an enigma, which is a dilemma, that's wrapped in a catawampus. And now that we find ourselves here, the question becomes what are we going to do about it? And until the reality goes, if I take my family to dinner and I buy myself dinner, and I look at my other guys and I'm like, oh, good luck. And they're like, daddy, don't you run a taekwondo? Yeah, I do, there's enough money for one of us. I'm gonna take care of myself first. That's not a leader. A leader leader feeds the troops first. And and so Steve McNally Shuckster, huckster took a pay raise and now paying what he's worth. He was getting paid what he was barely worth. Now you're not sending kids to tournaments while you're sitting in plain seats.
Speaker 2:That's tough on the kids. It's tough on America. In what other country could you do this? So you've got to take a look and listen to the PR. Shster hikes. You know huckster and what he's doing. And then the other guy who's in pulling the strings behind the scenes is jay and jay. Jay is ridiculous, but jay's always been that way. He's always been a politician that looks out for the best plane ticket because he doesn't like sitting wherever he lives alone and playing with his fly fishing. So it's time to put down the fly fishing rod and actually pick up the rod. Stay home, fish a little more, get out of the taekwondo and let some people lead it. That can make it go, but anyway I got real quick.
Speaker 4:I've got a question write that one down down. I know it's a big open-ended, but if you thought there was one thing that you could provide USA Taekwondo whether it's whatever organization what would be something you could implement that you think that would just improve us?
Speaker 3:Well, you guys have just mentioned it. I think really clearly, juniors. Juniors are the future of 28. And then, beyond that, you know, I put out tables and charts showing the ages of Olympic medalists and the lighter weights. You know the two Olympic weight divisions, in both male and female. There's a lot of teenagers spread around there. Tj mentioned, you know, 17 year olds who you know might even be 16, because they're 17 that year, uh, and then you know 18, 19 year olds, and this last year, of course, in paris, you know, we had a number of teenagers even in, even in 67, three of the four medalists were under 19 yeah
Speaker 3:yeah, and so, you know, you got to get the juniors involved. And here's, here's a dilemma that say sport is created and, you know, say sport might have great ideals, but I think it's really hurting. You know, the development of junior athletes in taekwondo and probably other athletes. I've been told that the academy is not allowed to have athletes there who are not 18 years old. And so, you know, even though Christina Tichette was there when she was like I don't know, 15 or something, that seems to have stopped and so they're reluctant to involve juniors in a variety of things. It seems I'm assuming this, I'm speculating and so but that's going to be self-defeating in terms of Taekwondo, because the lower Olympic weights are very young. They average, you know, like 21 years old, and the heavier people average like 24, 25. It's not like they're 30. There's a couple of oddballs that have already won medals that come back and win another medal.
Speaker 4:Sure.
Speaker 3:But you know, and then that brings me back to the USA at the Olympics. And Juan, you're the only male in 58, minus 58, who's ever gone to the Olympics for the US, and you know what's with that.
Speaker 4:And there's hardly any 49ers.
Speaker 3:There's two 49ers.
Speaker 4:I never even thought about that, to be honest with you. Yeah, but you know what they can't. I mean, maybe they can't you liar, you think?
Speaker 2:about that every day? No, I never thought about that. I always think about being 17,.
Speaker 4:but I don't think about. I never even thought about 58.
Speaker 2:I did not think about that. You killed that line. That line is now dead. There's only one of you, and that's forever.
Speaker 4:Hey, no, I was going to say like the, I know maybe they can't have people living full-time at the Academy, but they can bring people out there and if they have the money, you say they do they should.
Speaker 4:You know they've had it last year. They, you know they've done it a couple of times, but it's always been self-funded. If you want to come out there, so, or you know what, how, about better yet, maybe these coaches could get out to these places and actually invest in them. I mean, no offense, and we're not perfect, but like, for example, in Brazil, like we're, we're focused on our Olympic level athletes and we have two men and two women that are right now under the age of 17 and we take them with us, you know, to these international training camps in uzbekistan and korea, all the different stuff, because we know that one of them, maria clara, was like that and he gave the 80 guy. They were these little kids that nobody really paid attention to, but they had a little something. It panned out. For us it might not pan out, but you gotta at least try yeah, we're not trying.
Speaker 2:You don't expect these snobby gosters to do this, do you really?
Speaker 4:I mean, you can't he's making up words now. Mr lewis, this is what happens in our show there's slobber to gullions and they can't do it.
Speaker 2:These are snobby gosters and, in case you don't know, a snobby goster is an unprincipled but shrewd person, and I couldn't think of a better, better word for it. And just because I like words, a slubberdegulian slubberdegulian depending on how you pronounce it. That's somebody who's a drunken fool, and you can. There's a president of a particular IF I'm thinking that falls into that category. But all kidding aside, on the, on the sense of, I think the thing that I've always respected about you, mr lewis, is your unflinching willingness to take the data, analyze it and then let it lead where it leads. So, and when you see that and when you talk about that, I think the next, the next set of questions become to what degree does the organization listen or recognize the problems inherent in it? And I'll point you to a movie in particular, and it's a movie about a baseball team down this way, the Oakland team, moneyball. And this guy took a ton of that data and said, OK, here's what we should be doing. And they went on to win whatever they won, right, became a better team.
Speaker 2:And I always looked at that and I was like you know, coach Moreno said something interesting. Yeah, they probably couldn't afford it. But the idea that you take an unflinching look at what happens and why and then to try to determine why In the past the WT somebody did an analysis of it might have been you what was the highest scoring techniques and in what situation? I think it was in Korea and you guys would be surprised to know this. But what is the single most high-scoring kick in Taekwondo? No in Taekwondo. No in Taekwondo Back in the day.
Speaker 1:Back in the day.
Speaker 2:To the body, nope To the face, yep, and the reason will surprise you.
Speaker 4:No, but that makes sense because, it was more obvious.
Speaker 2:The roundhouse kicks they did more but they didn't always score. Roundhouse kicks they did more but they didn't always score. Roundhouse kicks per percentage of attempts and scoring you roundhouse kick somebody in the face, you got a point 99% of the time. So that's useful information because now when you're fighting and you know that you can score a round kick to the body, but if you kick them in the face, you're definitely going to get a point. One of the analysis I'd like to see you do in the future, mr Mr Lewis, is I'd like to see you go and look at when I am, when I play. I will, I will when I can.
Speaker 2:Right now I'm trying to get away from the slollygosters, but the it's, it's time, because it's a kerfunkle and and a catawampus all wrapped into two. So, with that said, the analysis I would love to see because I see it in many different sports is there's a way people play when they're trying to win a match and then there's a way when they're. They play when they're losing a match and trying to win the match in the last 30 to 40 seconds, and it would be interesting to see when it works, why and how, and when it doesn't work, why and how and I have my own theory on it, but I I will guarantee you you will see a different expedience. You'll see a different choice of techniques and and it's and it's actually unintentional. So when a guy is losing by a point or two, they'll try to score something that they know will definitely score a point, as opposed to trying to score what should score a point.
Speaker 2:But anyway, those are those I think I it would be interesting to see where your research could morph into and, given the opportunity, how it could improve the performance of a US team, much like in Moneyball. It was improved for Brad Pitt's team, not that he needed Brad Pitt's, you know he's got first world problems. Sorry, not sorry, but I think that would be interesting as a sport. I think on the other side of it, you know, once you get through this financial data, that would be interesting information for the USOC, because you can't, as a nonprofit, keep $900,000 in the bank. It's illegal under nonprofit law. It's got to be mission-specific and spent on mission-specific stuff. I'm sure they got a mission for it. I'm sure they got a mission for it's got to be mission specific and spent on mission specifics I'm sure they got a mission for it.
Speaker 4:I'm sure they got a mission for it yeah, I got a personal question you ever how many gold mines did you find, sir? Three, three, yeah, hey, tj, we got. We got a hit up that house. We're going to reno man, we're gonna find gold. I know he's got a lot.
Speaker 2:He's in the mountains he's got storage rooms I'm looking at the house right now. He's got a tree on his ceiling. He's got a plant with a tree in the ceiling. I mean this is a guy. And then he's got sort of.
Speaker 1:There's a secret button behind that that like opens up the wall.
Speaker 2:He's got carved dolls up there that are either some sort of ethnic art from something or other, or it's a picture of like.
Speaker 4:I want to hear about these gold mines. Where'd you find them?
Speaker 2:Is that?
Speaker 3:a Kachinka doll you have up there. Yeah, those are trophies my wife won from bodybuilding.
Speaker 2:Oh, but pull over a little bit more. There's one over there that looks like a Kachinka doll. Do you know what that is?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's Wonder Woman over there, oh Never mind, it's not a Kachinka doll.
Speaker 2:I apologize, yeah, so we've got resources.
Speaker 2:yeah, that's what rich people say all right, we're good, we're good, I, you don't have to say no more, I don't want it to turn into a kerfuffle. So, um with uh, with all that said tj, what? What would you like to see? What is what? What is something that you think that mr lewis could do that would help you in your day-to-day life? And I'm not talking about sharing the location of his infinite amount of gold mines, which he goes and blunders when he runs out of kachinka dolls, but I think for me my biggest thing is, like I said, we said it a bunch of a few seconds ago with the juniors.
Speaker 1:I want to see the junior stuff. I'm always care. I know you didn't, you were supposed to hope he's still talk about it a little bit, but just kind of like that has to be something that we're doing. I, I just don't. If we're not doing that, then we're not trying to win.
Speaker 3:There's no way you can explain it to me any other way right, yeah, and you know, when you know I I was tracking worldwide the number of junior, uh, junior world medalists, or gold medalists in particular. That went on to do be very successful as a senior and I was surprised but it was actually a relatively low number. It is, yeah, you know, like the, the italian guy who's in 58 I forgot his name at the moment yeah, he, uh, he won gold in in both uh, but it's, you know, kind of few and far between it. It really surprised me and there's a ton of.
Speaker 3:Iranians that do extremely well in juniors and cadets. Now, there's cadets, but even they they don't. Mobina Namatzadeh is an exception. She won medals at both recently and she's still like 18 or something, but a number of other ones didn't either.
Speaker 4:So they just have so many people that maybe it doesn't, it doesn't matter to them I remember back in like when I was coaching the us national team I'm talking early on. I remember the uslc provided us documentation that in our sport that junior success didn't necessarily translate into senior success. But I also think that the sport was a little different and so you had. It took a little longer to acquire, you know, results. But I think now, going back to your data about how young it is, people are winning. Like you said, tj, they're winning consistently at 16, 17, 18, and then they get out and somebody new comes in. So that's, you know, alarming. If that is the truth, if that's the path. Yet we don't have that. Like like nothing, like we don't have that, like like nothing, like we don't have anybody 15, 16, that we go oh my gosh, they're the next best thing. So that's we we did.
Speaker 3:You know, if you look at anna zelich's background, I don't think she ever lost a match as a cadet or junior, like none no yeah, no, but again, she was an anomaly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right, there was, there was nothing around there. But I think where there's some, I think there's people out there that we could do, that, we could run them, you know, and they could be ready. But only if they're invested in, only if they're taken around. If you're just relying on these local coaches because now I'm going to go back I think in the United States we have a problem because historically we do extremely well cadet and junior-wise in in the Pan American region. Matter of fact, we usually dominate, they usually dominate. They go to the world and they're pretty competitive.
Speaker 4:In a couple of divisions They'll pop out a medal or two, but then it just keeps going down and down and down. Because a lot of these local coaches they run them so hard to to, to get better, so fast, and then by the time they're 16, 17, 18, they're just, they're tired, they want to, they want to move on where some of these other people have better investment and better kind of methodology and that's why these kids can perform at 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Ours are gone by the time they're 16, 17. Part of it is because they're local coaches, but I think a bigger part is the federation that doesn't say here's where I can take you, here's where we can assist you. They're just, they gotta make the decision. Yeah, I'm gonna go to. I'm eight, I'm 17, I gotta get ready for college. You know, I got I gotta go, and this, this sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Oh no, go ahead. Yeah, I think I I was going to mention that, but you already. He mentioned that. You know the united states has different, different parameters for kids at that age. So kids will become competitive and then they go to college, unlike swimming, where the kids have the same problem. They are competitive, but they get college scholarships or soccer, like my son. They get a college soccer. They'll end up in a college program. So they get another four years to 22 to become successful and then swimming is just such a big money sport. The problem then you have is the bottom is pushing out the top so quickly. So you get a guy unless he's an outlier, like michael uh phelps, you get a guy pushing you out as soon as you win. You win one and you're done, because there's another kid swimming just a second faster than you.
Speaker 4:But at the university level we get. I mean, it's almost a death sentence right now in this country because 98% of the places you're going to go are not going to have a dedicated sport program with a dedicated coach, and so, yeah, you could be in the taekwondo program, but it's almost like you got to move to the area and go train with somebody else or hope that the area you live in has a decent coach. I mean that's.
Speaker 2:You know you can always go to Carolina.
Speaker 1:You know, during those years that the collegiate team was fully funded. At least there was teams at that level that were fully funded. At the collegiate level that used to be a like a pinnacle thing. You went from junior team to collegiate team. The next goal was to try to get on the Pan Am championship team and the world team was ultimate gold, and that's just what it was. But now I think not having that I mean, I know people still do collegiates but there was one point that the USOC paid for it.
Speaker 2:When we went to, like some of the, the Izmir games and university games, you got to understand why the USOC paid for it. So the USOC dedicated money and I don't want to be a flippant to drip it but the USOC paid for it because it was part of the USOC's plan that was submitted as a high performance plan marker by Taekwondo. So Taekwondo received the majority of its budget. And this is the problem I just realized now I forgot. As a part of the high performance plan you make your markers and your events and you want the ones funded and you request funding. When you receive that funding, you either use it or lose it. So when you say I need $100,000 to go to collegiates, you got to use it. What you don't use has to be returned, can't be repurposed. But when the organization itself is putting 900 grand in the bank or whatever it can do whatever it wants with it, the US OCs money it's got to account for, but it doesn't have to account for the 900.
Speaker 4:But that goes back to, like you know, the, the transparency and stuff like that Where's that money going? Because you're right, if they made a CJ to your point, to Mr Lewis's point if, if it was transparent and they said, listen, the marker is going to be this, this and this, but they don't want to support their collegiate because maybe that's not their, they don't control it per se or they don't run that tournament. So it should be a marker because that would help with development. That's the USOC's problem.
Speaker 2:In other words, the USOC takes the high-performance plan that's given to them and they say yay or nay. And now, right now, that used to be volunteer-driven. So volunteers would look at that and say, oh, that's good or that's bad. And quite frankly, I'll give you an example. And it's at speed, it's a cross-country skiing. So the us, the usa ski speed skiing, sends in a thing and I'm the guy overseeing it. So I look at it.
Speaker 2:And when I look at it, and when I look at it, I realize that all their selection criteria is subjective. And it says it seems objective, but it says if somebody wins this they're on the team. If they win this, they go to trials, if they win this much. And then, when you take a closer look at it, they never win those events. So the entire plan is subjective. Now, a staff member wouldn't have caught that, a volunteer caught it, I caught it. So when the USAT puts in its plan, they go oh, that sounds good. Oh, they're going to do what? All right, and that's because it's like do the X's and O's add up? And I've got. Right now there's 45 sports or whatever, and each guy's got eight or 10.
Speaker 4:So he's like next, and that may be true. And I don't blame the USOC, I blame the USAT, because you got people doing the high performance plans that have never run programs. They never run high performance programs, they never run successful schools.
Speaker 2:They don't care. They don't care. They don't. They don't care. They don't care. They don't care, they. If they cared, listen, how could they care? They went to an Olympics and their top prospect didn't medal. They don't care. They don't care. They don't care. They got to go. They don't care. They went to. They went to get back to Mr.
Speaker 4:So what's what's next for you guys? What's next for USA? You know the WT, you know page, and then what's next? I mean, you just keep, keep plugging along, or do you? You have anything? What's your?
Speaker 1:goal.
Speaker 3:What's your goal? Yeah, maybe that. Yeah, maybe that. You know, since it's a hobby, you know I just do a lot of stuff and so I'm not sure there's too many goals involved. But you know, I want to see improvement in USA performance at major events, like you know Senior Worlds, junior Worlds and similar events. You know, senior worlds, junior worlds and similar events. The Olympics I see as a bit of an anomaly because it's such a restricted, you know cadre of athletes that can go and you know it's, but it's the ultimate. But you know, I look at worlds as a real benchmark as to how the U? S is doing and something that you know I was just actually pulled up a chart that I had that you know it's an older chart, but I've got 2011 through 2023, our performance at Worlds. And you know the thing is that we don't, we're not really improving, even though, you know, in 22, there was a Gold with Michaela and the last time there was a Silver with CJ.
Speaker 3:You know I really look at quarterfin and up the best that the US has done in quarter finals and medals.
Speaker 4:Let me guess 2017.
Speaker 3:Definitely not no 1987.
Speaker 2:1987. 2015.
Speaker 1:No no.
Speaker 4:Before I say that, 2015. 2015.
Speaker 1:In the no Before I say that 2015.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but in the recent I wasn't thinking that much. This is between 11 and 23.
Speaker 3:So yeah, in 2015, we had two medals and three quarter finalists, including Mr Terrence Jennings. And that's the best, I got got. No shell beaks right, yeah, me and Servette so that's the best that the US has done in those criteria in those seven world championships. Last time was only two people and Michael Rodriguez got a quarter final.
Speaker 2:That's it 1987, the entire men's team medaled, with the exception of maybe one.
Speaker 4:So, 1987.
Speaker 2:No, actually I think everybody medaled no you didn't, flyway didn't meddle. Paul, yeah, he's a good guy. He didn't meddle First year on the team. He shouldn't meddle First year on the team. He should carry bags and make ramen. So 1987, historically most successful teams in the history of the sport at the Pan Am Games, at the World Championships, and the reason was most handsome team we were.
Speaker 1:What you were doing was the electronic era. It was from the electronic?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't even, I couldn't be honest. Had I seen the electronic era, I would have ran to another sport had I seen what passes for taekwondo now. I would have ran to pickleball. I would have become the world pickleball champion. Or I would have been the first male not to change gender and try to become a synchronized swimmer. Just so you know, if that didn't work out for me, I'm going right to curling. Right to curling because I knew I could do that.
Speaker 4:But let me, let me go back to Mr, let me go back to this.
Speaker 2:I got one last thing to say. I seriously and this is a fact and I think you know this, coach after retiring in 92, I seriously considered going to luge, but not luge skeleton, because the entire sport in the country at that time had 10 people that were doing it. If I entered, it ran on a sled, fell on it, get down the hill. I'm in the top 10, no matter what, and I wanted the swag. I wanted the Olympic swag. Unfortunately for me that year there was this kid came from a long line of skeleton guys. Jimmy O'Sullivan won a gold medal at the worlds, crushing my dreams of being a two-time olympian in different sports I feel that, though all right, go ahead I just had to share that and I didn't mean to be, uh, you know like, but that's my thing.
Speaker 2:Like you know, I love data like that.
Speaker 4:I love data like that. That you said, mr lewis, because you know he said you put it out there. Hey, so wait a In the last again, just like in our presidency and our country. When things are going good, you want the credit. When things are going bad, you got to take it on the chin. And so these guys. Now they've had 2019, 2021, 22, and 23. They've had these world championships under their belts as the program directors, as solidified bona fide, and we're having two quarterfinal finishes. That's success.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a tough one and again, I'm not saying— you said that's the best one from 2015? The last one from 2015 was the best result. Yeah, final 1987.
Speaker 2:But that's my point. You know what?
Speaker 4:I'm saying when people tell me their success or that it's healthy, how do you explain that? Remember, we talked about people. Eyes are saying one thing, but data and facts are another thing.
Speaker 1:I said that it's an illusion.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's right. If that was you, you would have lost your job. Listen, no pun intended, but I lost my job in 2012 when I had 50% of the team and 100% of the medals Right and the Pan Am Games. The year before, I had 50% of the team and I had 100% of medal rate at the Pan Am Games. But it's funny because now I don't know what standard they're using. There is no standard.
Speaker 2:Early picture of, for those of you watching the podcast instead of listening to, an early picture of tj as a youth at least I have one hair.
Speaker 1:I used to have long hair for real, though, but there is no standard. There can't be a standard because we're only worried about the few people that are in that room. If you're not in that room, then it doesn't matter. They're not there to coach the whole usa team. It's never a goal about trying to be the best in the world. It's about their guys doing well. That's it, past that point. It's irrelevant. That's a crazy one. 2015 is crazy because I was mad that year. I think we wanted more that year. Of course, we always wanted more, but those were tough matches.
Speaker 3:Steven Lopez lost in the quarterfinals too.
Speaker 1:I forget who he fought. 15. Did else too. Yeah, I forget who he fought 15 people.
Speaker 4:Did he fight the iranian kid? It might have been those of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it might be running, was he?
Speaker 4:run or was it? Uh, I don't know. I asked the ask, uh, the I was thinking about the by john guy. Yeah it was, it was tough matches, but yeah, that was a, that was good stuff.
Speaker 4:Well, listen, you know, mr lewis, I just got to say for me, I'm so impressed that you're still around, because I love people like you that are just fans, and I know you have the time on your hands a little bit. You're busy with other stuff, but I love that you take the time to give this stuff and I love that Coach Grandma Sprez said it's just so forthcoming whether it's for Canada, whether it's USA, whether it's just so forthcoming whether it's for canada, whether it's usa, whether it's brazil. You're like hey, here it is, guys, and you know you don't apologize for it. And unfortunately, I don't think people you know take you seriously enough. Because you know, I think, at least in this country, even though I work for another country, if I was here and I was running things, I mean I would hire you. I mean I just think you have too much good to offer.
Speaker 4:Um, you know, you know for for a number of different reasons, because we need someone like you to crunch the number. So, you know, I hope you keep doing some good things. I hope your page keeps growing. I I see more and more people, you know, liking it, and not just from the country, from around the world people. People are looking at it, you know, so that's pretty cool stuff, good well thank you very much, you know.
Speaker 3:One final thing I just want to throw in that I forgot to mention I wanted to highlight it is that, in terms of these, all these financials and stuff, the move to charlotte, north carolina, had a massive improvement in everything too there. I didn't even say that they're getting about two million dollars, including in-kind contributions, from that sponsorship that they got there. So that's one of the reasons that the bank account is building up, and so that was, you know, a very smart, strategic um. But uh, you know, now, like you've all said, it's time to support the youth. Uh, and you know, in many different ways, I like these talent id camps, send them to worlds, uh, pan am championships, all that stuff, really support the youth yeah, that's, that's second and tertiary thinking, and I think you're right.
Speaker 2:I forgot about that. So, although I often joke about um that move, because I don't think it was in the best interest of the organization, it was a cost savings. And then the vik stuff, which is value in kind, um is important as well and that's where you get the savings. But then it's really a question of what you do with the savings and and that's yeah, that's my thing, listen, I don't not.
Speaker 4:The colorado is the olympic town and I don't think it was the hotbed of taekwondo either. But you know, moving there was, of course they had. You know, they got a great, you know a great deal. So you know it is what it is. But but they, but they got to invest in it, they got to use that other resources, those other resources too.
Speaker 2:We've taken a lot of your time and you know we try to.
Speaker 2:we try to keep our podcast to a certain length, just the right about the right amount of time, before somebody gets annoyed enough with us where they realize that we're not as smart as they thought they we were. And so I want to thank you on behalf of the Warehouse 15 and apologize for anything that TJ may have said to affect you, and certainly you know I don't know why he kept sending me those words to say snarly gospel. I just wanted to share those as well. Any parting thoughts from?
Speaker 1:anybody. Thank you, I appreciate it. I think we got to do it again. I think we got to do it again, I think, maybe for the purpose of actually having three or four topics to kind of talk through. I think we kind of jumped around a little bit and kind of touch here, touch there, but I want to, like I said, have those conversations connected directly to the statistics. So maybe next time we'll be able to pick another date and maybe do just two or three things and get to those things directly.
Speaker 2:So if we can get you off the mountain in time.
Speaker 4:No, I'm going to say the exact same. First of all, thank you for coming out. I'm going to say I just feel like you're you're you kind of fit in with this group. You know to be honest with you because you're independent thinking, you say what you want to say and good luck to everybody how you guys interpret it. So I think you're right, tj, as as some of these topics come up, I would love to be able to bring you back a little bit more specifically, That'd be awesome.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much for having me. It's been a blast, I love it. And yeah, if I could do some preparation on a subject or two, uh, that would be helpful to me so that you know, I got some, some real numbers to just say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and we could do that. I love it. Being independent has a lot of value. I can say whatever I want. So can my wife, who says a lot of things that she really wants and it doesn't affect us because we're not in anybody's pocket and not asking for a handout.
Speaker 4:Yes, sir, I love it.
Speaker 2:All right, gentlemen, have a great afternoon everybody. I'm going to say I'll be.