Ron Hair took over the reins of the Southeastern cross country team in the spring of 2013.
Hair makes the transition from high school coaching to the collegiate level and moves to SE after serving as a coach and a teacher at Slidell ISD in Slidell, Texas, since 2007.
The team immediately responded to the change, with a pair of first-place finishes as a team, and no worse than a fourth-place regular season finish.
The breakthrough came when the team turned in a third-place finish at the Great American Conference Championships after being picked to finish eighth in the preseason poll.
Hair coached a pair of All-GAC honorees in his first year in freshmen Bailee Weger and Haylee Story.
In year two the team maintained its strong showing, with Story earning her second-straight All-GAC honor and the team finishing sixth in the conference championship and posting a pair of top-three finishes throughout the season.
The team finished his third year with a seventh place finish at the GAC Championship, but posted a pair of top-five finishes ont he season, including a runner-up run at the UAFS-Trinity Invitational. Weger and Story continued to pace the team with six of the top-10 5K times belonging to one of the two.
He has spent more than 35 years coaching at the high school level with track and cross country.
Over that span he has coached 11 state qualifiers at the high school level, as well as four regional championships at the individual level.
He has also had one regional championship team finish, while adding five team district championships and guiding his squads to five-straight high school division wins at the Cowtown Marathon.
Hair began his career at Dickson ISD in 1975 and has made eight stops since then before landing at Slidell.
Prior to Slidell he spent five seasons at Bowie HS in Bowie, Texas, which followed an 11 year stint at Springtown HS in Springtown, Texas.
He has been recognized throughout his career as a teacher, earning Bowie’s Teacher of the Year honor in 2006, and he was named the State of Texas Teacher of the Year by the Council of Humanities in 1999.
Hair is a 1975 graduate of Southeastern Oklahoma State with a Bachelor of Science.
