Diversity and Winning Have Marked Dean Hayes’ 50 Years As MTSU Track Coach

For a half century Dean Hayes has been coaching the track team at Middle Tennessee State University.

That means he’s spent thousands of hours evaluating young athletes and building his teams. But over the decades a central part of his recruiting philosophy has stayed constant.

“The world is made up of a mixture of people,” says Hayes. “If you’re an athletic team and you’re made up of only one race and somebody else is made up of all the other races included – you’re going to lose.”

Adhering to that mindset, Hayes track teams have been known for their diversity. At a morning practice, the veteran coach looks on as Ifiok Umoh and Loveth Odia warm up.

“Now those two are both from Nigeria. Atsu[Nyamadi] is from Ghana. But we’ve had them from Gambia, really Central Africa — all the way across,” says Hayes.

To loosen up before their workout, the runners dart from side to side as they pop their outstretched legs over the hurdles lined up one-by-one along the side of the track. There’s anew-fangled term for these drills: plyometrics.

“I really started doing some of this stuff back in the early ’70s, only then I wasn’t smart enough to give it a fancy name,” Hayes says with a grin.

His white hair has thinned over the years, but the trim 77-year-old Hayes still looks as if he could take off running down the track if it weren’t for his slacks and loafers. He stands in a stadium that bears his name but when he arrived in 1965, none of it was there.

“Where we’re standing right now on the track. This was a field, a pasture. Murphy Center wasn’t here. We had 5,500 students,” says Hayes. “And Murfreesboro was only about 20,000 then, also.”

The Road To Tennessee

Born in the suburbs of Chicago, Hayes was a track star in his own right in college, running the 800-meter, competing in the long jump and specializing in the triple-jump.

He got his degree in science and began teaching high school math but soon realized explaining equations and formulas in a classroom wasn’t for him. So he typed letters to dozens of colleges around the country asking for a job.

“There was a bunch of programs that were coached back then by assistant football coaches. And a lot of them were getting ready to split because athletics were getting bigger and track was getting bigger.”

And one that wrote him back was MTSU which hired him as its first full-time track coach.

‘How Fast Can You Run? How Far Can You Jump?’

When he got to town, the roster Hayes inherited was mostly white – with just one African-American walk-on. But that would soon change. One of Hayes’ first phone calls was to Illinois high school track standout Jerry Singleton, who would become the first black scholarship athlete to compete on any MTSU varsity team.

“For me, I came from Chicago and integration and stuff like that for me was Chapter 3 in my history book,” says Hayes. “It wasn’t trying to make any statement. Mine was: ‘how fast can you run? Or how far can you jump?’ ”

Despite that forward thinking, this was the south in the 1960s. For road trips, Hayes crafted a map of where and where not to stop.

“I was a little careful. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had restaurants where no, I couldn’t go eat there. I would be a little careful with motels but I tried to do it ahead of time so that I knew that we weren’t going to have a problem at a motel,” said Hayes. “Howard Johnson, I’ll give them credit, that was a motel you could stay in the whole time.”

Back at home, Hayes found a community ally who helped stave off any backlash.

“We were really lucky in Murfreesboro, because ‘Tee -Niny’ Scales. He was on the City Council and he was pretty popular. So because of the Scales family I think it made integration a lot easier.”

‘Come Let Us Reason Together’

“Tee-Niny”was the nickname for Robert Scales. He ran the family funeral home and was the first African-American ever elected to the City Council. His daughter, Madelyn Scales Harris, today a City Council member, was a young girl in the mid-1960s and remembers a Murfreesboro that looked much like the rest of the South.

“Well, we were not really that different because we had the colored water fountains and restaurants and places we could not go in,” says Harris.

But she says racial tensions in the city were often diffused by people like her father.

“My Dad, one of his famous slogans was ‘come let us reason together.’ He believed in sitting at the table and talking out our issues, you know.”

With that kind of backing Coach Hayes continued to integrate his team and they continued to win. Through the years, his squads have claimed 49 conference titles. Four of his athletes have become national champions and dozens have competed internationally.

‘I Can’t Retire Cause I’ve Got Nothing Else To Do’

As for how long he’ll continue, Hayes says coaching is the only thing he knows to do.

“I don’t play golf. I don’t fish. So I can’t retire cause I’ve got nothing else to do,” Hayes says. “I always use the joke: ‘I don’t want to stay at home and fight with my wife.’ I love my wife so I’d rather not fight with her.”