Rodney Smith is in his second season as the head track and cross country coach at Hardin-Simmons.
He had a very successful first season at the helm of the HSU track program as he coached the National Division III Female Athlete of the Year in Ashley Huston. Huston won the indoor pentathlon and outdoor high jump and heptathlon. She was also the ASC female athlete of the year, the ASC track athlete of the year and the ASC Woman of the Year nominee.
Five different track athletes were named to the national all-academic team last season.
Brendon Kelso and Dacy Ivy also qualified for the NCAA Championships in the school's first year of competition.
Smith returned to Abilene after a lengthy background as both a
track and field and cross country coach and also in the business
world. Smith has spent two and a half years as the head girls and
assistant boys track coach and the head boys and girls cross
country coach at Uvalde High School.
Prior to that, he was in the construction business in Santa Fe,
New Mexico. Prior to that, he was the head coach at Dalhart and
Abilene Christian High School.
He was an assistant coach at Abilene Christian for seven years and
also was the head track and cross country coach at David Libscombe
University in Nashville. He was also an assistant coach at Southern
Arkansas.
In his career, Smith has coached four collegiate national champions, six high school state champions, 14 All-Americans, one world champion, won three national team titles as an assistant at ACU, was the NAIA Area 5 Coach of the Year in 1983 at Lipscomb and coached four Lone Star champion cross country teams at ACU.
Smith earned a master’s degree in education at Southern
Arkansas where he was also the head cross country coach and
assistant track coach. He did his undergrad work at ACU and was a
double major in health and physical education.
He and his wife of 27 years Annette have four adult children.
Quinn is an attorney in Miami, Fla., Toni is a wife and mother in
Washington D.C., Laura and Jason both live and work in Abilene.
Don W. Hood, one of the most renowned pole vaulting coaches in
the world, will join the HSU staff as a colunteer assistant.
Hood was a volunteer assistant coach at Abilene Christian
University for 12 years on the Wildcats’ staff after serving
as the Wildcats’ head coach for 11 seasons from 1978-88. He
received the highest honor of his career in December 2006 when he
was inducted into the United States Track and Field and Cross
Country Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame.
In January 2009 he was inducted into the Pole Vault Summit Hall of
Fame.
A 1955 graduate of ACU, Hood remains one of the world’s
foremost authorities on training techniques for and coaching of the
pole vault. During his tenure, two Wildcat pole vaulters (Billy
Olson and Tim Bright) competed in the Olympic Games for the United
States, and a total of seven vaulters (Olson, Bright, Brad Pursley,
Dale Jenkins, Steve Thaxton, Bobby Williams and Cam Miller)
qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials.
Olson was the most successful of the group, earning the
world’s No. 1 ranking in 1982 and setting 11 world indoor
records.
During Hood’s 11 seasons as the head coach, he led the
Wildcats to eight NCAA?Division II?national championships and one
NAIA?national title. Hood coached nine Olympians at ACU and 12
overall in a coaching career that included stints at North Texas,
Wichita State and Howard Payne.
Hood’s teams won nine national championships and nine Lone
Star Conference championships, and he was named Coach of the Year
eight times.
He has helped coach nine vaulters to all-America honors, and Jane
McNeill was the first female in NCAA?Division II history to win a
national championship in the pole vault as she won the 1999 indoor
championship. McNeill went on to win the 2001 outdoor national
title. Meredith Garner, Katie Eckley and Angie Aguilar have also
won national championships under Hood’s tutelage, and Val
Gorter, Elizabeth Buys and Jessica Blair have earned all-America
honors.
Aguilar became the first NCAA?Division II?female vaulter to win the
indoor and outdoor individual national championship in the same
year.
Johnson is in his second season as a track coach for the Cowboys. He helps with the throwers and one of his javelin throwers Brendon Kelso advanced to the NCAA Championships last year.
Johnson has coached for 32 years at the middle school, high school and college levels. He has coached city champions, district champions, regional champions, state champions, conference champions, academic All-Americans and national qualifiers in his career. He also has coached three football linemen that have gone on to NFL careers.
He was the top thrower at Abilene Christian in the 1973-74 and
1974-75 seasons. He is also a USATF certified official.
Shawn Hailey is in his second year as the distance coach at HSU
after coaching one year for his alma mater McMurry University.
While attending McMurry, Hailey was a two-time individual
conference champion and was a member of four consecutive conference
track team championships. Hailey stands alone as the only athlete
in McMurry school history to have earned eight all-conference
honors between cross country and track. He was a four-time academic
all-ASC selection and a member of the Academic All-America Cross
Country Team in 2007. He was named Athlete of the week in October
2005 and again in March 2006 after breaking the Outdoor 3000-meter
run school record at Texas Tech. Hailey was a member of the Texas
Cross Country team that placed 3rd in
the 2001 Down Under International Games in Australia.
