David Bailey
It was his first day as a teacher at Lincoln High School, before classes had started in 1968, and David Bailey (Cleveland, 1963) hadn’t even had time to align the chairs for his future students or clap the chalk dust out of his dry erasers before he got an offer he couldn’t refuse.
In truth, he could have refused it, and he very much thought he should. Fresh out of Portland State, Bailey was already secure in his day job, having landed a full-time position at Lincoln right after finishing his student-teaching gig there. But he couldn’t shake the advice a “super teacher” had once given him, which Bailey remembered as something like, “If you ever get offered a job, don’t say no.”
Now he was being asked by a Lincoln administrator to take on the additional job of coaching the Cardinals’ boys cross-country team. Even without any experience, Bailey wasn’t averse to the idea of coaching. However, he did feel if he was going to coach something, it should be in a sport he’d actually heard of.
So, before not saying no to the offer, Bailey went home and talked to his two brothers, telling them, “They want me to coach cross-country, but I don’t even know what that is.
”Fortunately, his brothers said they did and proceeded to describe to Bailey the cross-country they knew well—avid skiers that they were. Now intrigued, Bailey read up a little more about this cross-country skiing before deciding, “I can do that.”
So, no, David Bailey was not born to coach cross-country running—or even run for that matter. He just spent the 50 years leading up to his retirement in 2018 giving every impression that he was, winning 23 girls and 13 boys PIL cross-country titles, girls state championships in cross-country (1978) and track (1980) and a coach of the year honor. In addition, Bailey’s programs would produce dozens of college athletes, three Olympians and thousands of exemplary students.
Not too shabby for a coach whose only previous experience in sports came when he ran on the Cleveland track team. For one day.
“Actually,” Bailey deadpans, “it was only one lap. But the day I went out for the team was the day someone was taking photos for the school newspaper. So, there’s evidence I was there.”
Hooked On News
As a kid, while others were out running around and sweating, Bailey was watching baseball and boxing on TV with his dad and developing a strong interest in current events, which would influence his future educational and career decision-making.
“I was fascinated by news, and I have to credit some grade-school and high-school teachers for that,” he says. “Every day in sixth grade, my teacher would play the news and then we’d have to write about it and take current events tests. Then, when I was a sophomore at Cleveland, a teacher introduced me to the Spanish-American War and yellow journalism, and I was fascinated by that, too.
That inspired Bailey to join the same Cleveland newspaper staff that would document his stint on the Cleveland track team, which came to a quick and quiet end when he opted to take a warehouse job with the Naito brothers at Norcross China.
“Who knows, maybe I coulda been a contender,” he cracks, channeling Marlon Brando. “The Naitos always hired high school kids for their crews, so I worked for them in high school and after classes once I got to PSU. They’re the reason I was able to attend college because our family didn’t have any money.”
Once he graduated and got to Lincoln with his degree, a new job and coaching title to add to his CV (which he would never need to use again), Bailey got a welcome-to-the-team gift from one of his future runners.
“I had been doing some reading up on cross-country, but one day before classes started a student named David Wienecke approached me and said, ‘I’m on the cross-country team at Lincoln. Here are some books that I think you need to read.’ God bless him; I owe my coaching career to him.
”Then in his next breath, Bailey also hands credits to legendary Grant track and cross-country coach (and PIL Hall of Famer) Mark Cotton. “He was a great role model in so many ways and one of the great gentlemen of the sport.” Then he extends gratitude to his fellow members of the PIL coaching community, who never let competition trump collegiality. Finally, he praises all the student-athletes who “put up with him,” over the years, from the young freshmen to the long-tenured upperclassmen in his program.
“I had great kids who just wanted to run and, early on, were willing to put up with a coach who was learning by doing,” Bailey says. “I was always so grateful for the freshmen because I was able to run with them and keep up, at least for half the season. But I could start working with them when they were 14 and, if they stayed with the program—and most did—I’d get to watch them grow into fine young men and women.
“When it comes to any success, though,” he adds, “it’s true there’s no substitute for talent. If I take credit for anything it would just be for building a program and making it available to anyone who wanted to run and could put one foot in front of the other and repeat the process.”
Groundbreaking Girls
After coaching just boys for the first four years of his career, Bailey’s role expanded when Title IX opened more athletic opportunities for girls. While adding a girls team broadened the scope of Bailey’s responsibilities, it didn’t change his approach.
“It was a learning process for me,” he says. “I was just getting my feet on the ground coaching boys and now I had to figure out how to deal with girls. Well, the answer was, I dealt with them exactly the same way I dealt with boys.”
Bailey credits a pair of intrepid Cardinal runners for helping kickstart his girls program by turning out for them team and showing their classmates, “It was OK for girls to sweat.”
“Cross-country was one of the first sports to open for girls,” Bailey says. “Molly Morton and Kathleen Hart were cousins and fine runners who paved the way for our program by coming out and making it look fun—which it was.”
Christy Lacey-Krietz MacColl, who ran for Bailey in the 90s and in 2015 joined him in the PIL Hall of Fame, is more than happy to give her former coach the credit he’s reluctant to give himself. She calls Bailey a “Lincoln legend,” but for more than just his coaching accomplishments.
“He touched so many generations of Cardinal students and was actively involved in so many aspects of the school, whether it was in the classroom, the Cardinal Times newspaper, coaching both the track and cross-country teams, announcing all the home basketball games, even announcing each student at graduation,” MacColl says. “I know the Lincoln community is immensely grateful for his 50 years of service and dedication.”
Bailey’s long-standing fascination for news came in handy during his 42 years teaching journalism and advising the Lincoln newspaper staff. His pride in the accomplishments of his students is equal to that of his runners. He’s as quick to name former students who’ve succeeded in the business world as he is those who continued their athletic success after high school, though he is reluctant to name names for fear of slighting every other student and student-athlete he taught or coached.
But let it be known there are former journalism students of Bailey’s who work, or have worked, for ESPN, NBC Sports and 60 Minutes along with the many collegiate runners and those three Olympians he coached. (One of whom, Philip Dunn, must be named because he’s also a PIL Hall of Famer, inducted in 2016 at the same time as Bailey and another of his runners, Kali Rembold Bader).
As expected, when it comes to any of his students’ success, Bailey says, “I had nothing to do with it."
It’s doubtful those students, many of whom he still keeps in touch with, would say the same. MacColl and several of her former teammates reunited with their coach at the 2023 PIL cross-country championships (see photo). “I thought it was so special that he would continue to take the time to support Lincoln athletes,” she says.
It’s surprising Bailey has the time for such pursuits. He still lives in the same apartment he moved into when he started teaching (“They’ll have to blow me out of there,” he jokes), but from the sounds of his retirement schedule, he doesn’t spend much time there.
“I’m in the carpe-diem phase of life. I try to travel as much as I can. That used to be based on my income; now it’s based more on my energy level,” he says.
Bailey has made multiple trips to Europe, including for the last several summers sojourns to Slovakia to visit a former exchange student and his family.
“The first time I went over there I learned this town I was visiting hosted the oldest marathon in Europe,” he says. “I suggested that we all run the half-marathon portion of it. So, the training began and the involvement grew until eventually all three brothers in the family were running.”
Bailey quit running the half-marathon two years ago but still tackles a 6.2-miler that is part of the event. “The last time I ran the half-marathon, the boys came up to me, handed me a device and said, ‘Here, clip this to your shorts.’ Turns out it was a GPS device. They were afraid I was going to get lost. I’m just so damn old.”
Call it long running, Coach. And wear it with pride.
Do you know David Bailey? If you’d like to reconnect, he can be reached at dabailey2@hotmail.com.
Member Spotlight
It was his first day as a teacher at Lincoln High School, before classes had started in 1968, and David Bailey (Cleveland, 1963) hadn’t even had time to align the chairs for his future students or clap the chalk dust out of his dry erasers before he got an offer he couldn’t refuse.
In truth, he could have refused it, and he very much thought he should. Fresh out of Portland State, Bailey was already secure in his day job, having landed a full-time position at Lincoln right after finishing his student-teaching gig there. But he couldn’t shake the advice a “super teacher” had once given him, which Bailey remembered as something like, “If you ever get offered a job, don’t say no.”
Now he was being asked by a Lincoln administrator to take on the additional job of coaching the Cardinals’ boys cross-country team. Even without any experience, Bailey wasn’t averse to the idea of coaching. However, he did feel if he was going to coach something, it should be in a sport he’d actually heard of.
So, before not saying no to the offer, Bailey went home and talked to his two brothers, telling them, “They want me to coach cross-country, but I don’t even know what that is.
”Fortunately, his brothers said they did and proceeded to describe to Bailey the cross-country they knew well—avid skiers that they were. Now intrigued, Bailey read up a little more about this cross-country skiing before deciding, “I can do that.”
So, no, David Bailey was not born to coach cross-country running—or even run for that matter. He just spent the 50 years leading up to his retirement in 2018 giving every impression that he was, winning 23 girls and 13 boys PIL cross-country titles, girls state championships in cross-country (1978) and track (1980) and a coach of the year honor. In addition, Bailey’s programs would produce dozens of college athletes, three Olympians and thousands of exemplary students.
Not too shabby for a coach whose only previous experience in sports came when he ran on the Cleveland track team. For one day.
“Actually,” Bailey deadpans, “it was only one lap. But the day I went out for the team was the day someone was taking photos for the school newspaper. So, there’s evidence I was there.”
Hooked On News
As a kid, while others were out running around and sweating, Bailey was watching baseball and boxing on TV with his dad and developing a strong interest in current events, which would influence his future educational and career decision-making.
“I was fascinated by news, and I have to credit some grade-school and high-school teachers for that,” he says. “Every day in sixth grade, my teacher would play the news and then we’d have to write about it and take current events tests. Then, when I was a sophomore at Cleveland, a teacher introduced me to the Spanish-American War and yellow journalism, and I was fascinated by that, too.
That inspired Bailey to join the same Cleveland newspaper staff that would document his stint on the Cleveland track team, which came to a quick and quiet end when he opted to take a warehouse job with the Naito brothers at Norcross China.
“Who knows, maybe I coulda been a contender,” he cracks, channeling Marlon Brando. “The Naitos always hired high school kids for their crews, so I worked for them in high school and after classes once I got to PSU. They’re the reason I was able to attend college because our family didn’t have any money.”
Once he graduated and got to Lincoln with his degree, a new job and coaching title to add to his CV (which he would never need to use again), Bailey got a welcome-to-the-team gift from one of his future runners.
“I had been doing some reading up on cross-country, but one day before classes started a student named David Wienecke approached me and said, ‘I’m on the cross-country team at Lincoln. Here are some books that I think you need to read.’ God bless him; I owe my coaching career to him.
”Then in his next breath, Bailey also hands credits to legendary Grant track and cross-country coach (and PIL Hall of Famer) Mark Cotton. “He was a great role model in so many ways and one of the great gentlemen of the sport.” Then he extends gratitude to his fellow members of the PIL coaching community, who never let competition trump collegiality. Finally, he praises all the student-athletes who “put up with him,” over the years, from the young freshmen to the long-tenured upperclassmen in his program.
“I had great kids who just wanted to run and, early on, were willing to put up with a coach who was learning by doing,” Bailey says. “I was always so grateful for the freshmen because I was able to run with them and keep up, at least for half the season. But I could start working with them when they were 14 and, if they stayed with the program—and most did—I’d get to watch them grow into fine young men and women.
“When it comes to any success, though,” he adds, “it’s true there’s no substitute for talent. If I take credit for anything it would just be for building a program and making it available to anyone who wanted to run and could put one foot in front of the other and repeat the process.”
Groundbreaking Girls
After coaching just boys for the first four years of his career, Bailey’s role expanded when Title IX opened more athletic opportunities for girls. While adding a girls team broadened the scope of Bailey’s responsibilities, it didn’t change his approach.
“It was a learning process for me,” he says. “I was just getting my feet on the ground coaching boys and now I had to figure out how to deal with girls. Well, the answer was, I dealt with them exactly the same way I dealt with boys.”
Bailey credits a pair of intrepid Cardinal runners for helping kickstart his girls program by turning out for them team and showing their classmates, “It was OK for girls to sweat.”
“Cross-country was one of the first sports to open for girls,” Bailey says. “Molly Morton and Kathleen Hart were cousins and fine runners who paved the way for our program by coming out and making it look fun—which it was.”
Christy Lacey-Krietz MacColl, who ran for Bailey in the 90s and in 2015 joined him in the PIL Hall of Fame, is more than happy to give her former coach the credit he’s reluctant to give himself. She calls Bailey a “Lincoln legend,” but for more than just his coaching accomplishments.
“He touched so many generations of Cardinal students and was actively involved in so many aspects of the school, whether it was in the classroom, the Cardinal Times newspaper, coaching both the track and cross-country teams, announcing all the home basketball games, even announcing each student at graduation,” MacColl says. “I know the Lincoln community is immensely grateful for his 50 years of service and dedication.”
Bailey’s long-standing fascination for news came in handy during his 42 years teaching journalism and advising the Lincoln newspaper staff. His pride in the accomplishments of his students is equal to that of his runners. He’s as quick to name former students who’ve succeeded in the business world as he is those who continued their athletic success after high school, though he is reluctant to name names for fear of slighting every other student and student-athlete he taught or coached.
But let it be known there are former journalism students of Bailey’s who work, or have worked, for ESPN, NBC Sports and 60 Minutes along with the many collegiate runners and those three Olympians he coached. (One of whom, Philip Dunn, must be named because he’s also a PIL Hall of Famer, inducted in 2016 at the same time as Bailey and another of his runners, Kali Rembold Bader).
As expected, when it comes to any of his students’ success, Bailey says, “I had nothing to do with it."
It’s doubtful those students, many of whom he still keeps in touch with, would say the same. MacColl and several of her former teammates reunited with their coach at the 2023 PIL cross-country championships (see photo). “I thought it was so special that he would continue to take the time to support Lincoln athletes,” she says.
It’s surprising Bailey has the time for such pursuits. He still lives in the same apartment he moved into when he started teaching (“They’ll have to blow me out of there,” he jokes), but from the sounds of his retirement schedule, he doesn’t spend much time there.
“I’m in the carpe-diem phase of life. I try to travel as much as I can. That used to be based on my income; now it’s based more on my energy level,” he says.
Bailey has made multiple trips to Europe, including for the last several summers sojourns to Slovakia to visit a former exchange student and his family.
“The first time I went over there I learned this town I was visiting hosted the oldest marathon in Europe,” he says. “I suggested that we all run the half-marathon portion of it. So, the training began and the involvement grew until eventually all three brothers in the family were running.”
Bailey quit running the half-marathon two years ago but still tackles a 6.2-miler that is part of the event. “The last time I ran the half-marathon, the boys came up to me, handed me a device and said, ‘Here, clip this to your shorts.’ Turns out it was a GPS device. They were afraid I was going to get lost. I’m just so damn old.”
Call it long running, Coach. And wear it with pride.
Do you know David Bailey? If you’d like to reconnect, he can be reached at dabailey2@hotmail.com.
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