LISBON – There is no competitive fire in Maine high school track and field that burns quite as hot as that which burns inside of Dean Hall, nor is there one that has burned as long.
Hall, and his Lisbon High School boys’ and girls’ track and field teams, will bear the dubious title of “favorite” heading into this weekend’s MVC conference meet. Just don’t tell him that.
“If you ask any of the other coaches in the conference, I don’t know that it would all be kind words,” said Hall. “Some think I have too much passion, that I am too passionate about the sport. To me, there is nothing wrong with passion.”
Eleven boys’ conference titles and four girls’ conference titles in 27 years don’t lie, though. Apparently passion works.
“I think Dean’s love and passion and perhaps most importantly his respect for the sport of track and field have led to success,” said current assistant coach Hank Fuller. “Not just with respect to titles won or wins and losses, but in a way that his student athletes have performed and learned to respect the sport, and what it has taught them about life in general.”
Respecting the sport
Hall’s current student athletes are almost all products of the youth summer program, which he runs every summer through the Lisbon Parks and Recreation Department. Many of the seniors have been with Hall for 11 years.
“He’s just such a supportive coach,” said senior Turner Huston, who has been with Hall since he was 6 years old in the summer track program. “He always took the time to make sure I was having fun. He took time with all of the little kids, like me at the time. He still does now.”
“I just like to play with a stopwatch,” said Hall as a smirk showed through the white beard that has become his trademark in recent years. “Honestly, though, the kids are everything. I love to watch them grow as people, from freshmen to seniors and then as they grow into young adults. We try to instill a good work ethic and a habit of hard work and respect for the sport.”
His current athletes have apparently heard and heeded his message.
“We’re probably the most well-behaved team out there at every meet,” said Huston, “he insists on it. We’re loose, but we are never disrespectful. We always have to respect the sport.”
And motivation? Not a problem for Hall.
“He’s always had more faith in me than I’ve had in myself,” said senior Nerissa Gross. “Every time I think I can’t do something, he talks me into it. This week we have MVCs, and he’s constantly talking us through it. He believes in us.”
“His excitement makes us excited,” said Jen Russell-Bickford. “This is his passion. It seems like it always has been.”
Twenty-seven years…
Hall has been teaching for 31 years, and coaching track and field for 27, claiming that he “missed out” by not coaching track and field for those four years. Still, the two are clearly intertwined.
“It is just an extension of teaching,” said Hall.
His athletes would undoubtedly agree, since most of them have also been students of Hall’s at Lisbon High School, where he teaches psychology and history.
“I think he takes track at least as seriously, if not more seriously, than teaching,” said Huston.
“He has more discussion in practice about track than in the classroom about history,” agreed senior Dan Suthers.
As for mixing the two, though, Hall does well to avoid that.
“If something bad happens on the track or in practice, he leaves it there,” said Russell-Bickford. “It happens the other way too. If something happens in class, he doesn’t hold it against you in track.”
Hall started as the boys’ head coach in 1979, and almost immediately made his mark. That year, Lisbon came away with a second-place finish in the conference meet to Maranacook (now in the KVAC), and had nearly won the meet.
“I’ll never forget that year,” said Hall. “Randy Berube had qualified for the final of the 200 meters, and if he had finished third or better there was a good shot that we win or at least put a lot of pressure on Maranacook. As he came out or his blocks, he ran into a bee that hit him in the eye. He almost fell, but ended up finishing sixth. When he finished, his eye was all swollen, but he had finished. It’s things like that that you remember, that make this a great sport. Those are things, and people, you just never forget, and there is something or someone like that every year.”
The sport itself evolved, as well. When Hall started, there was no racewalk, an event his teams have dominated in recent years. There was no 4×800-meter relay, and girls were not running distances like they do now.
“It was always segregated, the girls and the boys,” said Hall. “They all had separate meets and everything. That eventually changed.”
In 1991, Hall became the head coach of both the girls’ and the boys’ teams after an organizational shift that combined the teams and added three assistant positions.
“Now, there is no way I could do this without these three,” said Hall, pointing to his staff. “Dan (Sylvester), Doug (Sautter) and Hank (Fuller), I wouldn’t trade these three for anyone in the world. It makes a huge difference to have a staff like this.”
And the athletes’ motivation has also changed.
“It’s hard for them to do this sport,” said Hall, “and more and more of them are realizing how hard it is to compete against a stopwatch and a tape measure.”
…And counting
Some of the athletes still come back to thank Hall for all that he did for them. Some even appear out of the woodwork after 10, 15 or 20 years.
“Kids come back years later and tell him how much they appreciate something that he did for them in track,” said Fuller. “Maybe it was a disciplinary issue that they were upset about at the time, but later were thankful for, or maybe a piece of advice about their life. He’s a teacher by profession and a teacher of a sport that he truly loves.”
But for how long?
“I’d like to say I’ll be doing this in 10 years,” said Hall, but I really don’t know. If I would coach 13 more years I would have coached for 40 years, and that would be pretty cool, but I can’t guarantee that I will still be coaching in 10. For now we can say I’ll be here on a year-by-year basis. As long as I get kids that are excited about being here and want to compete and learn along the way, I’ll be here.”
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