Haines coached Southeast's track and field teams for 26 years

Legendary Southeast Missouri State track and field coach Joey Haines will be inducted into the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame on Monday, Dec. 15, at the USTFCCCA Convention in Phoenix, Arizona.

Haines spent 26 illustrious years at Southeast before his retirement in 2008. He coached Division II programs until 1992 when Southeast entered Division I.

Before coming to Southeast, Haines began his coaching career as an assistant coach in 1969 at Lipscomb University. He then took over as head coach in 1971 until his departure for Austin Peay in 1978.

Haines remained there until 1982 when he made his final stop at Southeast.

Haines' pursuit of coaching came from his track and field days at his alma mater and eventual workplace, Lipscomb University.

"Well, I was a track athlete myself. I was a javelin thrower, so I just developed a love for it," Haines said. "I always loved athletics and loved sports. I look back on it and feel like I never worked a day in my life."

As far as a role model goes for Haines, he said Dean Hayes, track and field coach at Middle Tennessee State University, has been his biggest inspiration.

"He was my mentor when I was with Lipscomb, which was just 30 miles up the road from Murfreesboro [where Middle Tennessee State is located]," Haines said. "He probably was the most inspirational person in my coaching career."

Haines' USTFCCCA Hall of Fame induction will be the most recent of many accolades he has enjoyed throughout his career, including 20 Ohio Valley Conference coach of the year awards, six Division II regional coach of the year awards, a Division II national coach of the year award and two Missouri Track & Cross Country Coaches Association coach of the year awards. He was inducted into the Missouri Track & Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2002 as well as the Southeast Hall of Fame in 2008.

Haines credits his success to the athletes he has coached over the years.

"Great athletes, that's not even debatable," Haines said. "You have to have great athletes. No matter how good of a coach you are if you don't have great athletes there's only so far you can go. We've been very fortunate in southeast Missouri to always attract great athletes to the track and field program, just like today they've got great athletes that are on the team right now. You can't make chicken salad without chicken; I learned that a long time ago."

Haines coached five NCAA Division I All-American athletes and 145 Division II All-Americans.

Those athletes helped Haines lead teams to a combined 24 Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association championships among men and women during the indoor and outdoor seasons while in Division II.

While at Division I, Haines' teams continued to reach elite levels. His men's teams won six OVC titles between indoor and outdoor, with more than 100 conference champions, including a national indoor champion in 1994. On the women's side, Haines led teams to 14 OVC titles with more than 100 conference champions.

Haines said he was fortunate to have an opportunity to coach at Southeast.

"Well, Southeast has always been strong in track and field, so what I tried to do was just build on that," Haines said. "We were Division II at the time and what I tried to do when I came to Southeast, I came from Austin Peay which was a Division I school, the thing I tried to do was look at things through a Division I perspective instead of Division II. Our goals weren't strictly set on competing in Division II, we set our goals to compete against Division I schools, which in track and field you can do."

Haines said that it was this philosophy that made it a smooth transition for Southeast to go from Division II to Division I.

It wasn't always easy according to Haines, however. He said he came across challenges during his long career as a coach, and that money was the biggest hurdle he would face.

"For me the biggest challenge was always money, not in terms of salary but in terms of having the money you needed to take care of your athletes," Haines said. "Money is always a struggle depending on what you needed to run the kind of program you wanted to run and trying to figure out how to get the money, how to deal with it and spending it on the right things. That was the biggest struggle of coaching."

No matter the challenges faced, Haines always found a way to produce superb athletes that competed at a high level. Throughout his almost four full decades of coaching, he said he never stopped learning.

"As a coach you have to learn, once you stop learning everything stops, everything comes to a screeching halt," Haines said. "Being a coach, you get an opportunity to be around a lot of special people and to be a part of their lives. I still communicate with people I coached 40 years ago. ... Just to know you had a part of so many people's lives and most of them still remember you to be a good part of it, you know, that's something that's really special."