Sunday, March 16, 2025
SPRINGTOWN — Springtown High School coach Tye Adams has always wanted to coach young athletes.
Growing up in Hamilton, Adams played baseball, ran track and played football. Adams knew from a young age that he wanted to be more than just a coach but a mentor, like his coaches were to him.
“I had some really good men that coached me in high school,” Adams said. “My high school coaches made me fall in love with the profession. When I went to college, I knew I wanted to coach and to teach. I knew I wanted to be like those men that influenced me.”
Adams graduated from Tarleton State University in 2004 with a degree in exercise and sports science. One of Adams’ mentors had gotten him an interview for a coaching position with Springtown High School even before his college graduation. Adams got the job and began coaching high school football, then freshman basketball. But Adams started to really enjoy track once he got familiar with the sport.
“I always ran track growing up, but I am a football coach first,” Adams said. “As I was learning from my coaches that took me in when I was in college, I learned how important a strong track program is for a football program. And then I just fell in love with track.”
As for the team this season, Adams says Springtown has speedy students on the track.
“We feel like we have some really fast kids,” Adams said. “Last year we took two relay teams to the state track meet and they were able to run fast. And we got those kids back. We want to win a district championship; we won it last year. We won the area meet. That’s our goal.”
The team is already one step closer to that goal as it dominated in the three divisions at the Yellow Jackets Relays in Boyd Feb. 28.
An improvement Adams has made to practices over the last couple of years is athletes track how many miles per hour they can run or track their distance for a certain amount of time.
“We feel like we do a good job of making them faster,” Adams said. “We do runs where we’re testing distance for a certain amount of time. Then we talk to our kids about what the data is showing, what they can do and how that should translate to a meet.”
Adams said showing students all the data collected makes them want to train better and run faster. Adams understands that track practices are quite challenging.
“There are going to be days that are real tough,” Adams said. “They know that there’s going to be those days that aren’t fun. And then there’s going to be days that are pretty decent. We have to embrace those days that are going to be really hard.”
But with the tough days come vast improvement. Adams says that's what makes the athletes better.
“Our kids are starting to understand that there’s a purpose for what we are doing to them,” Adams said. “When we tell them, ‘Go out there and really give effort on a day that’s going to be difficult.’ It's been good for the program.”
Brad Legan Friends and Family Invitational
A couple of years ago, Adams wanted to create a track meet where Springtown invites different schools to come and compete, along with family, friends and Springtown’s biggest supporters to come take in the competition.
Brad Legan was the head track coach at Springtown high for 19 years and got hired at the same time as Adams. This year was the second annual invitational.
“We enjoy going to other places to run track, but I told coach Legan “I want to host another meet and keep it small,” Adams said. But word started to get out about the meet and this year 13 teams called and wanted to participate.
Adams spoke about how the Springtown High School track team in the early ‘90s was exceptional but did slowly dwindle in the early 2000s.
“When Brad took over as a first-year coach, they hadn’t been quite as good,” Adams said. “But it didn’t take long for him to turn it back around and put some really good track teams out there.”
Legan retired from coaching but still teaches and Adams wanted to put together an event in his honor.
“It was definitely something I felt that coach Legan deserved,” Adams said. “He’s a great man and he’s a dang good track coach.”
Below are the results from the Brad Legan Friends and Family Invitational:
JV Boys track:
Varsity Boys track:
High school girls’ results were not press ready at time of publication.
