3rd-year track and field coach Ron Helmer having success changing program's culture

Walk into Gladstein Fieldhouse, the home of IU track and field, during a competition and you will see a team.

Clad in cream and crimson, its members sit together in the bleachers regardless of whether their respective events have concluded.

In unison they cheer on their teammates.

“I-U! (clap, clap) I-U! (clap, clap)”

Despite competing in a sport where individual achievements are often unaffected by group performance, these Hoosier student athletes are the epitome of a team.
This is what IU coach Ron Helmer envisioned when he arrived at IU in the summer of 2007.

After 20 years with the Georgetown University track and field program, where he served eight years as director and head coach, Helmer was offered the same position at IU.

“I was presented with an opportunity to come here and be challenged to build a program at a place where I knew it could be done, where history indicated that it had been done,” Helmer said.

And for IU track and field, the numbers speak for themselves.

Coming into this season, IU track and field had recorded 47 Big Ten team titles, four NCAA team championships, 39 NCAA individual champions, four American records and 392 All-Americans — and this is only the beginning of the list of accomplishments.

Prior to Helmer’s arrival, the Hoosiers were adding to the tradition of winning under the direction of Randy Heisler and his staff. As director of the team from 2003 through 2006, Heisler saw a number of top athletes pass through Bloomington before his resignation on Dec. 2, 2006. Most notably, the coaching staff recruited and coached Olympian David Neville, who earned gold at the 2008 Olympic games in the 4x400-meter relay.

But despite this success, there was a lack of team cohesion, which Helmer was determined to restore.

“There was a head men’s track and field coach, a head women’s track and field coach and a whole lot of people in charge of separate segments of the program,” Helmer said. “But there was no unity.”

This lack of continuity trickled down to the student athletes of the team.

“In individual areas there were individual athletes performing at an outstanding level being coached by outstanding coaches, but it was happening in way too few places,” Helmer explained. “There were a lot of people not being held accountable because the select athletes were taking care of that. The face of the program was a national champion here and there, but the team concept had gone by the wayside.”

Senior sprinter Will Glover and senior distance runner Wendi Robinson are part of a small group of Hoosiers who are still competing, having been coached by both Heisler and Helmer.

“It’s amazing that everyone on the team is starting to know the names of our distance runners,” Glover said. “Before I couldn’t tell you more than the names of the people that I came into school with.”

Robinson echoed Glover’s sentiments.

“When I first came here we were a team because we all wore the IU uniform, and ‘Indiana’ is what it said next to our results,” Robinson said. “Now though, we’re more integrated. We are a team.”

To make this transition, Helmer changed the culture of the program. He brought an entirely new coaching staff that he knew would be on the same page and have the same goals. He set expectations high and made sure everyone was held to them. The cornerstones of the program he was building were simple:

“Clean up your academics, clean up your conduct away from the track, and learn how to work and do so consistently,” Helmer said.

Not everyone bought into Helmer’s style of coaching. Because he took over the position during the summer, the recruiting period had already passed, and Helmer was faced with a team accustomed to his predecessor. The changes Helmer laid out did not appeal to everyone, and several members of the team left.

“When coach Helmer got here, he basically told us, ‘If you buy into my program, you will be good,’” Glover said. “Once he laid down his laws, everything started to fall into place.”

And after a rocky start, Helmer’s foresight is proving to be true.

This week, both the men’s and women’s track-and-field teams received their highest rankings ever since the ranking system was introduced in 2008. The men’s team is rated as No. 7 in the country and the women’s as No. 18. This comes after a start to the season that has already included four new school records and improvements in personal records from several Hoosiers.

“The change of mindset actually brought more of a team feeling,” Glover said. “We have milers and 3K guys that are out early to watch the sprints and the jumps, and in turn we have the jumpers and the sprinters staying to watch the longer races.”

Robinson said she agrees and thinks the new team unity translates onto the track.

“I think that when you see your teammates having success and you actually know them, it gets people more and more excited,” she said. “I feel inspired by the other performances I see.”

Helmer is now 62 years old and shows no signs of slowing down.

“I want to give kids the chance to be as good as they can be by driving and pushing and supporting them,” he said. “I know it sounds cliché, but we’re on a mission and we’re going to be working towards that every day. I’m not going to settle for anything less.”