By INGRID MALDONADO, student reporter
Cali Griffin first attended Fort Scott Community College then came to NWOSU where she earned her degree in agriculture business. She coached the rodeo team at Fort Scott for about five years, took a break and then coached another two years. She is now the new rodeo coach at NWOSU.
Q: What sold you to coming to NWOSU?
A: The community and the school for sure. They kind of toured me around and I got to meet everybody. There’s lots of places that support people, but the sport here is way different, everybody is so involved and wants everything to go so good here. Whether you’re in athletics or whether you’re just a student in a club or whatever it is, they want it to go well.
Q: What is one of the goals you hope to accomplish here?
A: Well, we obviously always have a goal of winning, because Stockten’s done a good job at that, and we want to carry on that tradition. I’m a big goal setter, so you know what I mean? I have goals for how many points I want the women’s team to get this year, or how many points I want the men’s team to get, but I mean, we’re just trying to create great students who are great athletes, who are great people. So, that’s kind of my main goal.
I guess if you want one main goal for the whole program, it would be to create great students, who become great people who great athletes are, who represent the college well and hopefully make the college almost for us. Obviously we want to take a men’s team and women’s team to the college finals, that’s always the goal.
Q: What do you think is your superpower?
A: The ability to keep kids motivated. There’s a lot of people in this world with a ton of talent who don’t have a ton of motivation.
There’s a lot of kids with a ton of motivation who maybe don’t have the most talent, but usually those kids with motivation, they see somebody who cares for them whether they’re super talented or not.
Those are the type of kids who go farther. If they have somebody who believes in them and kind of makes them believe in themselves, so I would hope being able to motivate people would be my superpower.
Q: What is something most people don’t know about you?
A: Man, I’m a sucker for murder podcasts, I will listen to 4,000 murder podcasts half the time before I’ll listen to the radio. So, I drive way too much. I’m a murder mystery fanatic.