Rodney Smith is in his third season as the head track and cross country coach at Hardin-Simmons.

Both of his track teams placed third in the ASC meet in the second year of the program.

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.

The top performer in the short history of the HSU track program has returned as the jumps coach for the HSU track and field program.

Huston was named the Honda Award Winner as the top Female Athlete in Division III in 2009 when she brought home three NCAA individual track titles and five all-American medals.

Huston had a banner year for the Hardin-Simmons track program, which was in its inaugural season. She won the indoor pentathlon and outdoor heptathlon and high jump NCAA Championships. She was also an All-American in the indoor high jump and the outdoor long jump.

She also won five events at the American Southwest Conference Championships and she was named the national field athlete of the year by the National Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. She also was named an academic all-district selection by CoSIDA and was an academic all-ASC selection. She was also the American Southwest Conference Field Athlete of the Year.

All of this came on the heels of her tearing her anterior cruciate ligament at the end of basketball season in the 2007-08 school year.

She graduated with a 3.74 grade point average as an Education major and worked one year as a coach and teacher at Cisco High School.

She is married to Lance Huston and lives in Abilene.

Jones enters his third season as the hurdles coach for the HSU track and field program.

He comes to Abilene after a highly succesful career where he won several state championships as the head coach at Lovington High School in New Mexico.

He has coached athletes that have been champions in all levels of track.

 

Don W. Hood, one of the most renowned pole vaulting coaches in the world, will join the HSU staff as a volunteer assistant for the second straight year.

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 third 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 in 2009.

Kelso also led a strong throwing contingent at the ASC track and field championships last year when he won the top scorer of the meet and was named to the All-ASC team. He won the discus with a 141-08 and the shot put 44-07.5. He also finished second in the javelin and third in the hammer throw.

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 third 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.

He is pursuing his master's degree at Hardin-Simmons.