welcome to the secrets of college planning i'm your host at the new yorker and today we're going to get some insight into track and field at the college level my guest today as anselm leval and he is the professor at seton hall yourself and how you came here well i'm mortally from trinidad and tobago you know i migrated to this country on july fourth one thousand nine hundred seventy seven which on july fourth just passed was forty years was that i came from trinidad and tobago and i must mention when i came on july fourth one hundred seventy seven i came in my other tree siblings military brothers and we came with one suitcase so there was you know we had all our belongings in one suitcase so so we landed our g f kennedy airport on july their job or our we would just pull so so we you know we came here in nineteen seventy seven and i had to make a decision you know while being in trinidad i was really i was all k in track and field and now i'm in the united states of america after i want to do with the future of my life what i want to do so i decided that i have to go back to high school for one year you know it's like when you send in players to prep school for another fifty year i decided i was going to go back to high school for one in order to a say you know and then after you know taken early retirement from the new york stock exchange where i work for twenty two years i came back you know i always alekhine or i like to teach you know and i came back and currently i'm a professor not interested in the business school teachin principles of business management organizational behavior and global business was that that that that's where it stands right now beautiful so when you were right in brooklyn at high school when did track and field really start for you was it freshman year senior year when you started getting recruited by some of these colleges or seton hall was it was well you know i had many other choices it wasn't just the no there were many other choices at alabama university i had is to michigan at quite a few universities however you know in trinidad it's a very warm climate and you know on a tough did attempt to make go from ninety degrees to eighty nine degrees and that's a kind of jump in the weather so you know i had to make a choice if the michigan was kind of out of the question because it's too cold and you know people told me didn't deter producible like twenty degrees below zero twenty degrees below zero never have a vision i don't know if i could have survived in stories what it is when i came to see the one nine hundred seventy eight there were six other eight hundred meter runners that came in with me as well so that make it seven there were seven of us and unfortunately for me i was lucky number seven so i was the i wasn't the best guy so to speak i wasn't the best guy you know from the seven guys came in you know but i know if i was given an opportunity to be on a scholarship but see nolan been the first one of my family to go to college seventy nine i was number one half mile it's the norm in the so he went from last to first in our team nolan it's all about hard work that's that's that's what really gets you you know you know because you have to be able to balance and just like a principal businessman something called time management you have to be able to manage your time you know in order to be successful in and i was able to manage my time in back then they want a lot of kids on scholarship majoring in business you know because unfortunately sometimes a lot of the kids one scholarship or majored in physical education are not against physical education it's ok it's fine you know but i think that the inner being i was the first one in my family to go to college you know i wanted to make sure that my degree back then the n c doubly rules were not as strict as it is now you know so we would run i mean you will train five days a week but if you don't have a track meet on weekend saturday and sunday basically ran on your own and back then at seton hall we had always ca so what i used to do i said get up in the mornings and go for my morning runs but i never used to tell anybody you know i wanted to be sleepin while i'm doing my morning runs so i said get up on mornings do my morning runs and wh hard would be talent you know so i was always working hard and i think the thing that made me successful is that i work most of the other kids in a team now how many tournaments do you run in is a quite a lot in the fall and spring well it's all it's a lot of track meets you know so you could have a track meet you could have a two day a track meet maybe saturday or sunday or you could have a meter friday on a saturday so the track meet was like almost every weekend you know we still go to a track meet so most of the time who we were we were just better at it then just like so so when when you graduated from college and you went into business what got you involved into creating a foundation and coming back to see how university is a professor and that's a great question as i said before in trinidad and tobago i grew up in one of the poorest areas of trinidad and tobago mean very very very very poor as a matter of fact you know my mother used to pay twelve dollars a month rent in and it was poor and the way how i got away from that environment was to a track and field scholarship so that track and field scholarship a big three hundred sixty degree return that happened so i believe that i was fortunate and i want now to give back to people from my community in trinidad and tobago to tell them that you can be successful just as and some successful and there's a quote that says hard your circumstances many turman who you are but you are responsible for who you become i want to repeat that your circumstances meet a man who you are but you are responsible for who you become there are circumstances ago we had our first football tournament we call it football in a soccer people call it soccer but we can surely call a football first football tournament i was very very successful you know for the youths to come out and just me trying to inspire them for a better tomorrow and tell them that you know there is hope for football scholarships there's hope for basketball scholarship there so for track and field scholarships you know there's hope for swimming scars ship water polo scholarship however it is not just outlet x it is academics with athletics so i call it a double academics and athletics you can just don't go basketball or run fast in track and field and you don't have any academics and you think you going to get a scholarship you know sometimes you think if i'm a great basketball player you know from a great swimmer that's good enough i tell people no that's not good enough you know you have to be able to balance the academics without metrics and if you can do that you know we were would quit you in order for you to acquire a scholarship in china that you need to go to canada cademy dark come in a can academy dot com is like this teacher an online service that's free that you can go you can get practice as they see test and you can you know in order to just to bring yourself up to speed in a so that's just part of the thing that i'm doing and i feel so good you know about being able you know to give back to my community so tell me a little bit about the foundation work what do you actually doing there is just bringing kids to to play soccer and then track and field and things like that or you're teaching them a lot about a lot of different things yes absolutely it is not just about sports it's about life skills as well it's about developing these these kids in order they could come to the u s to be successful you know we don't want to when they come away and do scholarship we continue to communicate with them to make sure that they are doing the things that is supposed to be causing a member of your lead in trinidad and tobago some of them being away from their home for the first time so they need people to continue to mentor them in order for them to continue to be success so now are they in high school already are you bringing them here in the united states in high school most of them already in high school but not only that my son attended boarding school might and my son attended the hill boarding school for two years you know so he was a junior in high school and he was going to be a senior but we felt that he was a young junior so we felt that he needed two extra years so we sent him you know to help boarding school and he was very good in football you know he actually broke the school record in just two years he scored forty five goals you know so he was pretty good but you know the hills kind of set him up from an academic perspective you know to go into jackson university or so on a football scholarship to be successful netted skills you know they have we can set them up for success and so you help them get into those prep school years well as college yes we'll have them we will assist them get into any one of those schools that they're trying for but the important thing is that we're going to strive to send them to schools where they're going to succeed and some kids i believe are not really ready for division one as yet so we have to send those kids to community college which i think is very important some kids are just not ready you know for division one school or give you an example you know when my son was going to high school there was a lot of different prep schools were after him but those prep school you had to stay on campus and i don't think my son was ready as yet you know to go away and stay on campus by himself so three years down the road you know he was ready so we sent him off the prep school so what it is is that as i said we have to make sure and set up these kids to succeed and an avenue for some kids might be community college f junior college before they go and you know two of the four year college for the final two years now there's something that a lot of people don't know out there you're also a record holder in the marathon and as i correct you know i  it's fantastic so now when you're in as a professor at the university do you get a lot of these questions from the student do they do they know a little bit about you well some students  find out about me you know but at the beginning of the class i do actually tell them it's like i tell them we have a test and the first day of class i said you know does everybody get the e mail that we were having a test the people look at me like what test is he talking about right i said well you know that's ok and one of the questions is how many were records do you think i have you know and then i give every student you know guesses it correctly i give them a little ward for guess in a correctly most of the time is no studio students don't sixteen is quite a bit  also tell them that part of my goal is that for the next two years or so is to reach twenty wow so you know i'm trying to get you know two decades of war record so that you do you give some of your wisdom of track and field to other students that are at the school and he will come up here that's a track oh absolutely absolutely because right now they want to have cross country at sea it is they have track and field but they don't have track and field anymore so a cross country runner see me actually training on the track and when they're training i would give them encouragement you know because i know i know that the coach coach moon was a coach when i was day still here so i courage the kids and after the kids come at them we all you know really appreciate it you could encourage us so you know i'm giving them encouragement and i go talk to them too you know tell them look this is the things you need to do you know you need to get kind of serious you need to make sure you get your rest you know before before a meet and you need to make sure that you eat in the right things as well because nutrition is very very very important very very important especially when you're only especially when i'm a vegetarian and one of the reasons why i'm a vegetarian is due to run and if i want to keep on running fast as i get older you know i need to get rid of some of the things that you know me so so after school is there does everyone have to have to be financially needed to school to get money at the school or can there be middle class type families that have money at the schools well well there are different different scholarships you know like you can get academic scholarships right there is academic and centers only course country if you mix cross country with academics you could actually be on a full scholarship you know there's different types of scholarship for example you know from if kids could the middle class and they have good grades they can get academic scholarship as well and signal is not really a cheap school you know but there are many other opportunities in order to gain academic scholarships as well  opportunity as an opportunity for many of these kids to make a life for themselves and in a future for themselves not only themselves but their parents too as well because many of these kids cannot afford one credit in a college so you know when i go there you know i try to impress on the kids and there's like i'm here today you know i normally go into different you know television stations in trinidad and tobago you know and broadcasting about what we're trying to do the work that we're trying to do we have in different events in a different communities so it's all about work you know and the kids got to play their part too because it's not just going to wake up and you just going to get a track of the scholarship a going to a basketball scholarship or football scholarship or swimmin scholarship you know you have to do some work too as well you know so as much as i can i'm always interested are trying to impress you know on the kids that this is what you need this is what you need to not only done but i believe that sports can take you away from other things that you not supposed to be doing you know if you're playing basketball two hours a day after you're finished your work your schoolwork you know when you're finished at practice you tired so you ready to go to bed so to me you know sports helps you know and it also teaches kids discipline because a track and field taught me a lot of discipline very very disciplined now when you're when you're in trinidad are you doing a lot of speaking engagements you had a kid find you well what kids can do they can go to my there's a website called from  st sports academy dot com there's also applications on there you can go to you can fill out applications with different sport for example i could teach and track and field you can go and you can follow the track and field application you put in your time you know you put in a link you know i've run ten eight and a hundred and here's where i run that ten a i've run twenty one it in a two hundred and here is we i went at two hundred and here's where i ran that time right so then what is i didn't talk to the coaches and and i got it but i i need a senator advisor in order for him to look at it because he's an international student you know so i mean i enjoy this work this work is fun for me you know and it's me given back you know from something that made me what i am t put me in a position that i am today now the do anything in the united states for any of the many inner city kids here well here is what i do i have what's called a run in development academy and running development academy to me is like when you go to s t prep a lot of people go for as city prep right because they want to do better in their city run in development academies you come to run a development academy if you want to do better in track and field you know so it's that university of massachusetts and her this you know i've i've i was coaching essentials like seven or eight you know she went on to columbia high school you know she did very well you know and then she knows i'm full scholarship the united university of massachusetts a i call it you know the prep track and field prep just like the s a t prep so i've worked at many kids from you know i've worked with some kids also not just in the you know the urban district but also in the suburban district as well  do you find a defined track today is different than track when you read oh absolutely totally different it's different no i mean because the difference now is that back then  dragoon as prevalent as it is now you know you could get you could just pop a little pill and it would help you to train harder you know back then you know we didn't take anything you know maybe a little vitamin c maybe a vitamin looking for for track and field like some of the events in the times like for example there's a kid in trinidad and tobago right now he has ran one fifty one one minute and fifty one second and eight hundred that's four scholarship material at any division one school in united states of america full scholarship all he has to do know is to get the academic part done together for example in a four hundred if you won forty seven one forty seven point one second that's for  scholarship in many schools right if you go if you go forty six anything that's for scholarship in a two hundred if you are twenty one point and it's full scholarship because remember there's a lot of colleges out here many many colleges in the top tier colleges the second tier colleges in the thirty year colleges and some two tier colleges would be looking for a kid around forty seven give them a full scholarship so you know there are times that people can run make your full scholarship and there are you know division three don't give scholarships you know so when you feel going to attend that school you have to have good academics you know with the athletics all coming to the end of our show and usually ask my guests what device you want to give to the parents out there that  and daughters want to run track at the college level well this is what this is advice that i basically give to parents i said you got to be involved you gotta be involved with your kids right and you got to encourage them there's two books that i recommend to many people to read the power of positive thinking by norman vincent peale and the magical thinking big by david by dr david short which is very important for the kids to think positive and for the parents to have a positive influence and i'm always telling the son that or daughters you know you can be good you can achieve this you know and that encouragement because i didn't have you know my mother was busy working you know and i didn't really didn't have anybody influence in me you know for me to inspire me for better  so what i'll tell the parents inspire your kids be with if they have a game try to go to the game with them if you can go to all the games but just be there for them you know and inspire them for a better tomorrow very well thank you very much for coming thank you for