Obituary

Former longtime Southeast Missouri track and field coach Joey Haines died at age 76 Tuesday.

Arrangements have been made with a visitation scheduled for Saturday, June 17 from 10-11:30 a.m. at Ascension Funeral Home (1016 Hillcrest Road) in Mobile, Alabama. Memorial gifts can be made to the Jane Haines Endowed Scholarship for Women's Track at SEMO.

Gifts via credit card can be made online HERE. Please include "Jane Haines Endowed Scholarship" in the comment box. Addiitionally, checks can be made payable to the SEMO Foundation Jane Haines Endowed Scholarship and mailed to SEMO Athletics One University Plaza MS 0200 Cape Girardeau, MO 63701.

A native of Columbus, Georgia, Haines retired from coaching in 2008 to conclude a 26-year tenure at SEMO. During SEMO's Division II years, Haines' men's and women's teams combined for 24 Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) championships during the indoor and outdoor seasons.
 
Haines led his men's team to the 1985 NCAA Division II indoor team title in the meet's inaugural season, and would finish runner-up in 1991 in Southeast's final year in Division II. In all, his men's team recorded five top-four indoor finishes and a pair of national runner-up showings at the NCAA Division II Outdoor Championships while claiming 17 individual titles between the two seasons.
 
His women's teams were equally successful on the national level with three finishes among the top four teams indoors and a fourth-place finish outdoors in 1991, powered by 10 national champions along the way.
 
After Southeast joined NCAA Division I and the Ohio Valley Conference, Haines' teams continued achieving. His men's teams won six OVC titles between indoor and outdoor since 1995 with more than 100 conference champions, including a national indoor champion at 500 meters in 1994. His women's programs racked up 14 OVC team crowns with another 100-plus conference champions.
 
Of those more than 200 combined conference titles, 17 came in the javelin, the event in which Haines specialized while a student-athlete competing at Lipscomb in the sixties.
 
Coach Haines was named OVC Coach of the Year 20 times during his career. He was the NCAA Division II National Coach of the Year in 1985, the NCAA Division I Regional Coach of the Year in 1998, MIAA Coach of the Year six times and Missouri Track & Field Coaches Association Coach of the Year six times.
 
He is a Class of 2002 Missouri Track & Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame member, a Class of 2008 member of the SEMO Athletics Hall of Fame and a Class of 2014 United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame member.