Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Less than two months removed from the program's sixth national title in seven years, Florida track and field and cross country head coach Mike "Mouse" Holloway sits comfortably behind his desk.

Well, he looks comfortable.

Yet another trip to the Olympics draws nearer. Holloway's coached an athlete at every Summer Olympiad since 1992. The last three Olympic Games have been the busiest for both he and the program, with at least eight Gators at each, in addition to coaching Team USA's sprints and relays in 2012. A program-record 12 Gators will compete this month in Rio de Janeiro.

"I feel like if I'm not there coaching somebody, I'm not doing my job; that I'm letting the Gators down," Holloway said. "Every four years, we need to have a Gator on that team. At least one."

Traveling to Rio is not why, below a poised smile, Holloway is anything but relaxed.

The dynasty he and his staff are continually building, not simply maintaining, puts a massive target on the Gators. It grows larger each year.

Statistically speaking, Florida's list of achievements during the Holloway era—beginning in 2003 for the men and 2008 for the women—is astonishing.

Six men's national titles since 2010, more than any program in the country. Seventeen top-two finishes at 28 men's NCAA Championships. Fifteen top-three finishes at the last 16 men's NCAA Championships, including eight in a row outdoors. UF's men and women boast 52 individual national champions, 145 Southeastern Conference champions, and 559 All-America honors with Holloway as head coach.

All the success is "still a little overwhelming" for Holloway. Thirty years ago, many doubted he could be a collegiate head coach. Or coach an Olympian. Or coach a world champion.

Today, pictures of each cover half a wall in his office. And this December, shortly after turning 57, he will be one of the youngest coaches ever inducted to the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

Every day feels as though it is a recurring dream. But Holloway's not content with, as he puts it, living his dream.

"When it comes to the program, it's like when we used to hop in our cars and go to a parking lot somewhere to wash and polish them up," Holloway said. "Then you're driving home, hoping it doesn't start raining or that you don't go through a puddle or something and get the car dirty. We've polished the car. It's majestic. I don't want anything to dirty it."

There are those, however, eager to see the pristine paint start fading and hear the engine cylinders begin misfiring.

Several people over the years told Holloway national titles are cyclical, to enjoy them while he could. Those conversations will stick with him forever. That negativity serves as his driving force. It wakes him up every morning. It keeps him working late at night. It doesn't afford him an opportunity to be comfortable, something he is unbothered by.

Never one to mince words, Holloway says he enjoys those within the sport wishfully thinking the Gators' remarkable consistency cannot possibly continue another season.

"I'd be lying if I told you I didn't," Holloway said. "That attitude is why it was cyclical for them, because they were expecting it to fall apart. We don't expect it to fall apart. That's the difference in our mindset versus most people's: we expect to be a challenger every year." Former Buchholz boys varsity basketball head coach Rick Swain is vividly recounting his ejection from a Friday-night game in 1991.

"I'll never forget it, because I didn't get thrown out (of games)," he says.

A questionable blocking call has Swain seeking answers. Unfortunately for him, the referee coming to provide them tossed a coach earlier in the week. This is not deterring Swain from pleading his case.

"You gotta be kidding me!" Swain shouts. "He was there so long he grew mold on his feet!"

Instantaneously, Swain receives two technical fouls—one for being out of the coaching box (by a foot, he claims), another for passionately disputing the call. Knowing his night is over, he looks down the bench for Holloway, his assistant coach.

Mouse rolls his eyes and asks, "What've you done?" Realizing this is a comical exchange and nothing like Shooter tensely replacing Norman Dale in "Hoosiers," Swain humorously responds: "Well, good luck, Coach."

Holloway and the Bobcats finish off the victory, but the ejection creates another issue. By rule, Swain must sit out Buchholz's next game as well.

This is not exactly a situation Holloway's been preparing for since arriving Buchholz in January of 1985, beginning his decade-long tenure as head coach of its track and field and cross country teams. Sure he coached a talented freshman team last year, a job Swain offered him after the two met playing pick-up ball in the school gymnasium. But the varsity squad? He's been on the staff less than a year.

"He was really a pretty good basketball player … but the technician parts of the game and timing for timeouts, it wasn't his cup of tea at that point," Swain says. "I don't think he was nervous. He just didn't want to let me or the team down, so he took it very seriously."

Buchholz goes on to win once again. Normalcy returns the next game. Mouse's record? Perfect to this day.

"I always say I'm the only undefeated varsity basketball coach in history," Holloway laughed. "I coached my one game and I was done."

As much as Swain enjoys telling that story, another memory always comes to mind whenever discussing Mouse: karaoke night at Napolatonos, a local restaurant Swain and his wife frequented during their time in Gainesville.

"It was our anniversary. Mike got up and sang a song for us," Swain said. "'On The Wings of Love' is what he sang. It was just so touching and gratifying for him to do that for us. We had no idea he could sing like that." Mistakes in track and field are excruciatingly unforgiving. Holloway knows this all too well.

As a junior at Columbus Linden-McKinley High School, Holloway led the 1976 Ohio State Track and Field Championships 120-yard high hurdles final with one barrier remaining. He "crashed" it. Three men passed him as he stumbled across the finish line.

State champion to fourth place. In an instant.

Holloway's devastation turned to focused anger his senior year, when assistant coach Ed Stone ramped up his offseason training program.

Mouse won three state titles and broke the 120-yard high hurdles record at the 1977 state meet. What made that day truly special for Holloway, though, was the team championship trophy he and the Panthers raised as one.

"He was all about the team," Stone said. "He always put the team first in everything he did as a runner and a leader."

Mouse went on to hurdle at Gainesville's Santa Fe Community College. One fateful day of his sophomore season in 1979, coaching became his life.

Sick and nursing a bad hamstring, Holloway, at the behest of his coach, directed the Santa Fe women's 4x100 relay practice. He loved it. But, as he learned once his hurdling career concluded, coaching jobs were in short supply, and what was available did not pay a lot, if at all.

Before accepting an unpaid position with the Gainesville Striders in 1983, he worked nights at Taco Nacho. Next he worked as a shift manager at Krystal, keeping that job until 1987. Meaning, yes, while working as an assistant coach at Gainesville High School (1983-84), volunteer assistant at Florida (1986-87), and for three of his 10 years leading Buchholz to eight state titles, Holloway simultaneously ran a fast food restaurant.

"I remember when he used to come out there coaching us riding a bicycle," said Tryone Kemp, a multi-time state champion during Holloway's tenure at Buchholz and UF's 400 meters record holder from 1989 through 2012. "He used to ride his bicycle out there, kick our behind on the track, get on his bicycle and ride back to his apartment. We had such admiration and respect for him."

Holloway's big break came in the summer of 1995.

Then-Florida men's head coach Doug Brown hired him as an assistant. Stone, who remains Holloway's close friend and his sounding board for career advice, remembers getting a call from Mouse.

"He called me and said they'd offered him a position at the University of Florida … what do you think?" Stone said. "What do I think? You idiot, I don't care what they pay you, take the job! I think he honestly thought he could do it, but he was probably in shock they were lifting him out of coaching obscurity

"He takes that job and we're off to the races in terms of his career."

Except for one problem: Holloway could not become a collegiate head coach without a bachelor's degree.

So, just shy of 40 years old, married, father to a young daughter, and dealing with the pressures of Division I coaching, Holloway went back to school. On Aug. 12, 2000, he graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Arts in history.

"When people tell me you can't make it in this country, I say, let me give you a guy's phone number who did it on sheer determination, grit, will, and all those classical terms you want to use," Stone said. "I couldn't be prouder of a kid I knew, and prouder of a fellow adult I know now." Of all the team titles in Holloway's coaching career, two were far more emotional than the others.

They are all special to him, whether it be a county or national championship. None of them will ever escape his memory. But the 2016 men's outdoor national championship and 1994 boys cross country state championship were unique.

This past season's title was a stunner to everyone, except the head man himself. After finishing seventh at the NCAA Indoor Championships and sixth at the SEC Outdoor Championships, outsiders wrote the Gators off. Doubters saw imminent demise. Surely this was the end of the cycle they long warned Holloway about.

Instead, the historic bounce-back victory sent a resounding message that Florida's reign lives on.  

"Something about it just really touched me," Holloway said. "Between what we went through all year long, my brother passing away had me in a funk for a while—all the emotions made that special for me."

The fall of 1994 was supposed to mark the end of Buchholz cross country's supremacy. State champs in 1989, 1990, and 1993. State runner-up finishers in 1991 and 1992.

Graduation hit Buchholz hard following the 1993 campaign. It had every reason to fall off, and anything but that would have been surprising.

Finally, it would be someone else's turn.

The Bobcats made it through the county meet. Then districts. Gainesville High nearly ended their run at the regional meet, leading to an impromptu team meeting. "We are not losing the state meet," they said.

Spoiler alert: they won. Again.

"That group took it upon themselves and said they were not going to let the program down," Holloway said. "I broke down and cried a little bit after that meet. Those kids just worked so hard and did not want to let the program down. That was pretty cool." Numbers are everything in track and field. From seconds to centimeters to points, the sport is all about how fast, how far, how high, or how many. It's natural to look at championships similarly, as nothing more than numbers to chase.

Holloway's a little different.

"I never thought let's win one, or let's win two," Holloway said. "Let's just win. Do I have this number? Absolutely not. That doesn't matter to me."

There is a number Holloway thinks about quite a bit nowadays, though: 99 percent.

Recently at a coaching conference, a speaker cited a statistic claiming 99 percent of all collegiate coaches will never win a national championship.

That gets Holloway wondering. Is his membership in this elite category why he is coaching?

"I'm doing this to change peoples' lives," Holloway said. "The championships along the way are wonderful. But the doctors and lawyers and all the other successful people in life, the great mothers and fathers out there that have come through the program, that touches me more than any other championship we've won.

"I want to make sure when my young men and women leave this program they are equipped with the tools they need to be successful in life. That's what this is about for me."