The Texas State track and field offices are a little cluttered nowadays.
Fifteen trophies gleam in the lobby. Ten of them sit on a pair of shelves, dating back to 2013, when the Bobcats won the women’s indoor and men’s outdoor Western Athletic Conference meets.
The newer, less dustier ones were displayed front and center on the lobby’s desk — three from cross country, one from the 2019 Sun Belt women’s indoor championship and the other from the 2019 Sun Belt men’s outdoor championship.
More than half of the trophies belong to head coach Jody Stewart. He’s running out of desk space in his office, too, with six Coach of the Year awards taking up an entire corner (the seventh hadn’t arrived yet). He’s a little worried they’re running out room.
“My first championship was my first four months here, (at the 2016 men’s indoor conference meet),” Stewart said. “This is year four for my coaching staff. We’ve won eight championships. It’s been a good stint so far.”
Stewart came to Texas State with the goal to grow the program to levels it hadn’t reached before. Each year, he seems to get a little closer.
A stack of posters lay on the lobby’s desk, too, reading “capturing the triple crown” in bold, capital letters. They’ve rested there since the end of the 2018 season, when Stewart led the Bobcat women to victories in the Sun Belt cross country, indoor and outdoor meets for the first time in school history.
His first conference win with Texas State, at the men’s 2016 indoors, was the first for the program. So was this year’s outdoor championship.
None of them were easy to come by. At the Sun Belt outdoors two weeks ago, the Bobcats were down on the leaderboard. It was cold and rainy in Jonesboro, Arkansas. That typically favored the east coast teams, who were used to the weather, unlike the southern teams.
“We knew the sprinters would struggle. And we saw that,” Stewart said. “We had to tough through to get to that point. we knew that was going to be a challenge coming in. We talked about in advance and I think at the end of the day, both teams competed extremely well.”
The men raced back on the final day to take the top spot.
Stewart mostly credits his student-athletes for the recent success the maroon and gold has seen. Track and field is mostly an individual sport. He tries to recruit “team kids” — those who understand what role they play how it benefits all the Bobcats. Eleven of them competed at the NCAA West Preliminaries in Sacramento, California this weekend.
“I love a young person who, No. 1, they’re coming to college because they aspire to do great things in their life,” Stewart said. “But the other part is, I look for team kids. Like, ‘I want to be part of a great team, a great family.’ To me, that’s what it’s going to take to continue winning championships.”
The head coach still doesn’t think he’s reached his goal yet. He feels the next step for him is to build the women’s team into an NCAA top-25 powerhouse and help the men's team win its first triple crown.
“They have to learn how to work together as a team,” Stewart said. “I think the guys finally found that. It’s not just that they’re talented, but they found a way to work together. I think the ladies team is really talented, we have a lot of individuals. Now we need these individuals to work together as a team. And as we do that, we’re going to have even more success than we’ve had in the past.”
He’ll figure out where to put the trophies later.
