When athletes go out for high school sports, they are eager to learn. They want to succeed. Many times, that all comes down to what the coaches can bring to the table to help these athletes rise to the top of their respective sports.
For one team in Montgomery County, the amount of wealth and knowledge the athletes are getting from a pair of veteran volunteer assistant coaches is enough to fill countless volumes of books. They are fortunate to be learning from two living legends.
Athletes on the Southmont track team are learning from veteran track coaches Robert H. Johnson and Ron Hess. To call these coaches legends is an understatement. They aren’t simply great coaches; they are even better men who have spent countless years building up this community through their coaching and many other community involvements. I am happy to say both are good friends as I covered their teams in the past, have gotten to know them away from sports and am proud that our lives have crossed paths.
First, there is Coach Hess. He was hired as the first track coach and was on Coach Ken Coudret’s first football coaching staff when Southmont opened in 1971. Coach moved up to Montgomery County from the Evansville area where he had started coaching when he was still in college — some 50 years ago.
Anyone familiar with Montgomery County track and its history knows that those early Southmont teams were legendary. They dominated the track arena, not only locally, but also competed with the best of the best at the state level. For those old-timers (like me) who can’t remember the Mountie Games that took place, Coach would invite the best teams from all over the state to come and compete in a big meet. It was like a preview of the state finals.
I can remember when the Mounties took a track team down to Terre Haute in the late 1970s and walked out with the sectional title. They also had a few years where they were right near the top at the state meet and had it not been for a sudden illness to one of the distance runners, the Mounties may have ended on top that year.
Coach Hess has been a mainstay of the track program for years as a coach, an AD, then as an assistant at North Montgomery for a few years to help coach his granddaughters, and now back at Southmont. The knowledge he possesses is incredible. He will sit and talk track to anyone — and anyone who listens can learn a lot.
If that wasn’t enough, on Wednesdays (the only day of the week that he is not helping with Wabash College) Coach Johnson joins the practices.
Coach Johnson is known all over the country as one of the best teachers relay coaching technique. That expertise is why he was part of the 2000 Olympic staff — which marked the first time a Division III coach had ever been part of an Olympic track staff. Johnson appears at coaching clinics all over the country, including sessions at the United States Track & Field Coaches Association’s annual convention, to discuss relay technique and handoffs.
The legendary coach served as an assistant coach at the National Sports Festival in New York. A year later, he coached sprints, relays and hurdles in Ethiopia as part of the Olympic Solidarity Project. In 1983, he was the head track coach of the North Team at the Olympic Sports Festival in Colorado Springs and later served as an assistant for the US Junior National Team which set two world records.
So why do these two men who have been doing this for 50-plus years take time out of their days to help coach high school kids.? Well, one day after finishing softball practice at Southmont, I asked them that very question.
“It’s what we do,” Johnson said. “We love this sport and we just love sharing anything we can to these young people.”
It’s just that kind of love for the sport, love for the kids and love of life that makes this world a better place today because of them.
Thanks for all you do Coach Hess and Coach Johnson and thanks for sharing with us all.
Barry Lewis has been part of the Montgomery County sports scene as a player, writer or broadcaster for more than 50 years and has a desire to keep Montgomery County sports history alive and well through Montgomery County Sports & More Facebook page.
