Steve Plumlee, left, and Donnie Mullins will be trying to put added focus on shoring up Ooltewah High School's boys and girls track programs this spring. Plumlee is new to the staff, having spent the past 14 years at Tyner.
photo by Larry Fleming
Veteran high school coaches Donnie Mullins and Steve Plumlee have combined forces and will lead Ooltewah’s track program this coming season.
Mullins, who has coached at Ooltewah since 2007, coached the boys and girls track programs and golf teams in 2014-15. Mullins also coaches the school’s golf teams.
But Owls athletic director Jesse Nayadley was able to lure Plumlee away from Tyner after 14 years with the Rams’ track prior to the current school year.
“On paper,” Plumlee is the Owls’ girls coach and Mullins the boys coach. They will be assisted by Elaine Peigen and Jensen Morgan, respectively. Peigen is Ooltewah’s head volleyball coach and Morgan directs the Lady Owls’ basketball team.
“In essence, we have four head coaches with the track teams,” Owls athletic director Jesse Nayadley said. “When we look at all our sports programs here, there’s no reason our track teams aren’t elite programs with everything we can bring to the table. We’re trying to get to that point. We’ve had some track individuals do well, but we’re trying to make a commitment to the whole program.
“When it comes down to it, like at the state meets when a boys and girls might be running at the same time, they’re going to split up and be with both of them. But everything will function together with the head coaches and assistants, and everybody is on board with that.”
Plumlee taught at Chattanooga’s School for the Arts and Sciences last year while he continued his coaching duties at Tyner Academy.
“That drive got old,” Plumlee said Tuesday. “The (Ooltewah) administration called me and said they had a math (teaching) position open and wanted to know if I would be interested. I look the thing over and saw that Ooltewah had 1,600 students compared to 550 or so at Tyner and they have a track. I never hosted a track meet in all my years at Tyner.
“Things fell into place and I decided to make the change.”
Said Nayadley, who came to Ooltewah as the boys’ head basketball coach before assuming assistant principal and athletic director roles on a full-time basis prior to school starting last year, on getting Plumlee on his staff: “That’s huge. Wendell Weathers, our dean of students, knew Steve and that’s how our talks with Steve got started.”
The 48-year-old Plumlee, who also officiates high school football games, was a middle-distance runner during his competitive prep career and Mullins was a sprinter and jumper.
Mullins came to Ooltewah in 2007 as an assistant on Nayadley’s basketball staff. He was the head girls’ basketball coach for four years before taking the spring assignments in the 2014-15 school year.
Last spring, the school’s track teams qualified 19 competitors – 10 girls and nine boys – for the state meet at the TSSAA Spring Fling in Murfreesboro.
Kiana Davis, then a senior and now at Middle Tennessee State University, finished second in the 200-meter dash (25.10 seconds) and sixth in the 100 (12.30).
As a freshman, Krystal Starling finished third in the shot put (40-9 ¼) and sophomore Ashley Price was third in the high jump (5-0). The Lady Owls placed sixth in the team competition.
The Lady Owls’ 4x100 relay team placed sixth with a 50.16 clocking.
Rashun Freeman, then a junior, turned in the top individual boys performance with a 22.63 200-meter dash time, good for ninth place. The Owls’ 4x100 relay team placed seventh and Ooltewah was 51st in team competition.
At many schools, the boys’ track team is usually connected at the hip with the football team, but that hasn’t necessarily been that case since Benny Monroe was coaching the Owls’ grid squad.
Mullins would like to see a reversal of that and get more footballers, especially the sprinters, to join the track program.
“That’s definitely something we need to change,” he said. “This year we have a lot of ninth-grade football players at skill positions committed to the track team. Jesse and I have talked for years about doing that. Athletes going from football and cross country to track should be a natural progression.
“We are focused on shoring up boys track. I have lunch duty every day and I’m talking to boys all the time, trying to get them to see that track can only benefit them. I would like to see more football players on the track team.”
Mullins said former Ooltewah football and track athlete Reggie Parks, now a Chattanooga policeman, will continue in his role as a part-time track coach.
(E-mail Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @larryfleming44)