After 42 years as Baylor University’s head track & field coach, Clyde Hart retired from the position in 2005 to become Baylor’s director of track & field. Hart’s four-plus decades of leadership have seen Baylor track & field reach monumental heights while earning a world-wide reputation as “Quarter-Miler U.”
Hart, a 1956 graduate of Baylor, has been head coach longer than any other head coach in school history. His pupils won an Olympic gold medal in six straight Olympic Games (1996-2012), including four in the 400 meters – Michael Johnson (1996, 2000), Jeremy Wariner (2004) and Sanya Richards-Ross (2012). All-told, Hart has coached nine Olympians who have won a total of 13 Olympic gold medals, one silver and three bronze with Johnson claiming five golds, Wariner and Richards-Ross three each and Darold Williamson and Reggie Witherspoon one each.
From the time he took over the program from his mentor, USTFCCCA Hall of Famer Jack Patterson, in 1964 through the 2005 season, Hart has coached 29 national champions (14 individuals and 15 relays) and 475 All America performances – 357 men’s All America honorees (123 individuals and 234 relays) and 118 women’s All Americans (45 individuals and 73 relays). His men’s 4x400m relay teams have earned outdoor All America status for 26 consecutive years and captured 14 NCAA titles. All-told, Hart’s teams have turned in ten world-record performances (nine individual and one relay) and nine NCAA record efforts.
In 2007, Hart’s charges won both the indoor and outdoor NCAA titles in the 4x400m relay, the fourth time in Baylor history and the tenth time in collegiate history that that feat was accomplished.
Those accomplishments are just a few in a long list by Hart, a coach widely regarded as one of the best in the country. Hart served as President of the track coaches association from 1989-91. He has also served as an assistant coach on the U.S. 2000 Olympic Team and has earned the U.S. Olympic Committee’s National Track & Field Coach of the Year award three times in his career.
Hart is a two-time (1989 and 1996) NCAA national indoor coach of the year (1989 and 1996), four-time Southwest Conference indoor coach of the year (1981, 1984, 1989, and 1996), and one-time Big 12 coach of the year (2005) honoree.
Selected as USA Track & Field’s 2004 and 2006 Nike Coach of the Year, Hart is a member of the Baylor Wall of Honor, the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, the Drake Relays Hall of Fame, and the Baylor Athletic Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award, given by the Baylor Alumni Association, and the Distinguished Achievement Award presented by Baylor University. In 2017 he received USATF’s Legend Coach Award.
A university building on the Baylor campus has also been named in his honor, and on December 5, 2014, Baylor’s track & field facility was named the Clyde Hart Track and Field Stadium, which replaced the program’s previous facility, the Hart-Patterson Track & Field Complex.
Hart retired after the 2019 track & field season after 56 years with Baylor, beginning in 1963.
Hart passed away on November 1, 2025, at the age of 91.