Ogden lifer Chick Hislop, 86, remembered for track and steeplechase legacy at Weber State and beyond
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- Weber State track coach Chick Hislop poses for a photo at Stewart Stadium in this undated photo. Hislop died Feb. 22, 2023, at the age of 86.
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- Weber State track coach Chick Hislop stands by a hurdle as he coaches an athlete in this undated photo at Stewart Stadium.
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- In this undated photo, Weber State track coach Chick Hislop, left, runs on the track at Stewart Stadium with his son, Lance.
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- In this undated file photo, Weber State track coach Chick Hislop looks on during a meet.
Chick Hislop’s track and field legacy sweeps from the macro to the micro, from local schools to the nation’s borders and perhaps beyond.
That legacy is stirred up this week in the Utah track community and across the country as Charles “Chick” Hislop, the longtime Weber State University coach with thick eyebrows, big glasses and high expectations who revolutionized steeplechase techniques, died Wednesday, Feb. 22, at the age of 86.
Hislop was a graduate of Ben Lomond High School (1955), Weber Junior College (1957) and Utah State (1959). His coaching career spanned more than 60 years. First, he coached for 11 years at Ben Lomond immediately after his college graduation, followed by another 38 at Weber State. That made him the longest-tenured head coach in any sport in Big Sky Conference history.
Hislop was also hired by USA Track and Field to coach men’s distance runners for the 1996 Summer Olympics, held in Atlanta.
Mainly coaching as a men’s track and cross country coach, Hislop led Weber State to 21 Big Sky championships, was Big Sky coach of the year 20 times, was the national cross country coach of the year in 1991, and coached 26 athletes to All-American honors. That included two individual national champions in Farley Gerber (1984, steeplechase) and Charles Clinger (2001, high jump).
After “retirement” in 2006, Hislop remained active in the sport he loved and took every opportunity to mentor and proliferate his knowledge, working one-on-one with local coaches, putting on clinics and accepting phone calls from just about anyone who took the time to seek out his advice — whether that was cold calls by track coaches from far-flung dots around the country or, often, his former athletes who were now coaches calling him to talk through a situation.
“Great coaches never really leave,” said Corbin Talley, the current WSU track and cross country coach who ran for Hislop at Weber State — “trying as I may to fill Chick’s shoes,” he said, “which is nearly impossible.”
Lance, the oldest son among five of Hislop’s children, remembers fondly tagging along to van or bus rides to track meets, looking up to WSU track athletes and how several big, family vacations were scheduled around track meets at various points across the country.
Lance says his father never pressured any of his children to participate in sports, though many did.
“He did his very best to support us to make sure he got to (our events),” Lance Hislop said. “He was one of the leaders of our extended family as far as making sure family reunions happened … and was somebody that extended family would come to and ask for advice. His advice was sought out on a lot more than just athletics.”
As recently as two school years ago, Hislop was coaching track and cross country at Roy High School. He often led or participated in clinics for other coaches, before and after retirement, so last winter, Hislop and Talley organized a clinic for college steeplechase coaches that drew participants from all corners and coasts of the country.
“Even to the last, he was concerned about making sure his knowledge and expertise and experience was passed on to other people,” Talley said.
Talk about respect: as Talley remembers, coaches from Portland, Notre Dame, Harvard, Virginia, Florida State and Alabama, among many others, traveled to Ogden to spend three days with an 85-year-old man to learn about the steeplechase.
“It was really special. He was still showing us all how good he was. His mind was so sharp and so great,” Talley said.
Like many associated with Hislop, Talley — who ran cross country, the steeplechase, 10,000 meters and 5,000 meters at WSU from 1999-2003 — became a coach, doing so at Davis High School for 14 years before his hire at WSU.
“He’s been there to encourage me, be patient with me, and always made sure I knew he was proud of me,” Talley said.
As one of WSU’s current coaches, Talley stayed very close with Hislop.
“In these last few months, he has shown so much pride in the experiences he had as a coach and there were a lot of times where he would get really emotional talking about one athlete or another and what he learned from them, and the experience he had with them,” Talley said.
Those who knew Hislop remember him as a technician, a master of details, and a hard-nosed coach who learned over time to collaborate with his athletes about their training.
“He was very much his way or the highway,” said Paul Pilkington, who ran for Hislop at WSU from 1978-80 and is currently working with Talley in WSU’s current track/cross country head coach duo. Pilkington also coached with Hislop at WSU in his first stint coaching at his alma mater.
Several people recalled times when athletes would be left off the team bus leaving for a road track meet because they were but seconds late. His expectations for those things were exacting.
“He very much expected people to work hard and that success was going to be a result of hard, consistent work,” said Dan Walker, who knew Hislop for most of his life. “Everybody who ran for him knew how to work when they were done.”
“But,” Pilkington said, “he evolved over time as a coach and he was not afraid to listen and learn new things. He coached much differently 20 years after I ran for him because training had evolved, and that made him a great coach. He could be very intense as a coach, but it brought out great performances. And he was very logical in his thinking and his approach to coaching … he was always very methodical about thinking things through.”
“As an athlete,” Talley said, “I knew he always had my interests, wanted to push me and help me develop. He was a coach who expected a lot out of everybody, which I loved about him.”
Many of Hislop’s former athletes who went on to coach carried some level of that methodical, logical, organized approach to coaching from their experience with him.
“He was always prepared. Whether that was reading books or talking to coaches before his time, he was always excited about figuring out the best ways of doing things,” Walker said.
Walker ran distance races for Hislop at Ben Lomond High School and again at Weber State. After graduation, he worked for about 12 years at Ogden Regional hospital (then known as Saint Benedict’s), becoming the lead chemist in the hospital’s laboratory.
After rising to the top there, he didn’t know what should be next. So he went to his old coach and asked for a job to work with Hislop and the women’s head track coach, Jim Blaisdell. He got one; the distance runner was assigned to coach field events at Weber State.
“You’re a scientist, aren’t you?” he recalled Hislop asked. “You manage people every day, right? Here’s some books and videos. I’ll see you in September.”
Walker coached with Hislop from 1984 until Hislop retired and remained a WSU track coach until 2017.
“He had a really great fun side,” Walker said. “Early in his career, he almost protected that. Very few people knew how much fun he was but by the end of his coaching career, everybody knew that he enjoyed what he was doing and enjoyed the athletes that he got to coach … he became a trusted coach who you could have some give-and-take with.”
Blaisdell coached with Hislop for nearly 30 years. He had coached at College of Southern Idaho and helped at WSU on a volunteer basis. Blaisdell remembers being a young father in the hospital with kidney stones when he learned Hislop had successfully backed his candidacy to come aboard in 1981 as the head women’s track coach.
Over the hundreds of meets and trips traveling around the Big Sky together, Blaisdell most remembers Chick and his wife, Dianne, opening their house for a big Christmas Eve party the Hislops threw for coaches and their families, and other friends.
“That was a really special thing … I’ll always cherish those memories,” Blaisdell said.
Hislop’s macro legacy is the steeplechase. The 3,000-meter race that features large, lanes-wide hurdles and a water jump became his expertise, taking good distance runners and teaching them techniques — most of which he created himself — to make them elite steeplechase runners. It’s a unique event that Hislop learned to master as a coach.
Pilkington, who later went on to a professional running career before coaching in two stints at Weber State with one stint at the University of Illinois in between, believes he was Hislop’s second-ever NCAA qualifier in the steeplechase.
Gerber’s national title soon followed. In that 1984 championship, Gerber’s U.S. collegiate record of 8:19.27 edged Washington State’s Julius Korir for the victory. Korir had won every steeple event he ran that season and, after his defeat to Gerber, went on just a few months later to win a steeplechase gold medal in the Los Angeles Summer Games while representing Kenya.
Gerber’s victory — “from tiny Weber State,” Walker said — helped launch Hislop into being one of the country’s foremost steeplechase experts. Over his career, Hislop would travel to clinics nationwide or host them in Ogden to teach his techniques — how to clear the hurdles in a more efficient manner than a typical hurdles race, or how to handle the water jump, for instance. Many of his techniques are now commonplace and he cemented his legacy for track and field in the United States.
Hislop leaves a micro legacy, too. He got involved in coaching distance runners at Roy High in retirement with his grandson, Miles, on the team. Miles (Lance’s son) would score key points to help Roy win a pair of region track championships and that helped bring the elder Hislop into the orbit of even more young athletes.
“He got a great chance to get to know his grandpa,” Lance Hislop said.
There are many under-the-radar stories of Hislop giving help to former runners.
“When I started my professional career, I was paying Chick. My family was young, my kids were young, we didn’t have tons of money. One day, a brand-new TV showed up at my house,” Pilkington said. “I didn’t find out until finally, years later, I asked and he admitted to it. ‘Yeah, I used some of that money you were paying me for coaching.'”
Hislop would take calls or visits from just about any track or cross country coach who showed interest in his knowledge.
One such person was Javier Chavez, who has helped coach track at St. Joseph High School over the years.
“He taught me, ‘do it this way and you will be good.’ I used his formula and, amazing, we did good thanks to him,” Chavez said. “He supported all the schools around in the community and encouraged the kids … the coaches and the parents, too.”
Chavez is one example of how those micro influences often grew into macro effects. Hislop recruited Chavez from Mexico “without a penny to his name and an uncertain future ahead,” says the website for the Ogden-based, six-location Javier’s Authentic Mexican Food restaurants that Chavez launched after his days competing at Weber State.
“Thanks to him, his courage, his knowledge, his passion, his love for the people but especially for me and my family, I am who I am,” Chavez said. “I started my business, my family; everything is thanks to Coach Hislop.”
Chavez ran the mile and the half-mile at WSU from 1977-82.
“He taught us to be brave, never give up, and always have in mind ‘what do you want to be?'” … he taught people to be good, love their families … and to be good not only in their sport but in other things in life.
“He’s given much to us. He was tough. You have to be tough sometimes if you want to be good but … he gave a lot of love and support to my family, for my kids and my wife. It’s a big loss. So many, many people ran for coach.”
It was Chavez who is said to have helped Hislop embrace the importance of rest and recovery in the training regiment of track and field athletes which, in the late 1970s, was not the given it is now in the sport.
Retired coach and educator Mike Hein somewhat found his calling because he ran track for Hislop at Weber State, competing in middle distances (then called the half-mile and the quarter-mile) and some cross country at WSU from 1971-75.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do when I enrolled at Weber State but my experience there and having Chick as a coach made me interested in coaching, so I decided to pursue that,” Hein said, who went on to get degrees at WSU and BYU. “He was hard at times but we always felt like he respected us and was in it … because he was interested in us.”
Hein (who, for full disclosure, is the author’s father) went on to teach English for a few years at Wahlquist Junior High and another 30 years at Roy High. Among a decade-plus stint as athletic director and assistant roles in several other sports, he was the head track coach from 1981-97, again from 2007-10 before his retirement and still coaches there on a volunteer basis. He led Roy to a state championship in 1991 and coached future Weber State decathlon star and Olympic bobsled silver medalist Billy Schuffenhauer, among others.
Hein’s experience running for Hislop turned into decades of school and community involvement in teaching and athletics, with an innumerable amount of youth passing through his classroom, locker room or city youth programs.
Dianne (née Leatham) preceded Chick in death by four months. She, too, was an Ogden lifer, and the two were married for 64 years. Dianne was influential as well, teaching at Mound Fort Middle School.
“Given the unique job Dad had (College Coach), Mom was able to influence hundreds of young men over a span of 50 years, acting as a mother figure for them. Many of these athletes still have a relationship with Mom,” her obituary reads. She died in October 2022 at age 83.
Chick and Dianne have five children, 18 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Hislop was also Weber State’s wrestling coach from 1973-78. He is a member of the Weber State Athletics Hall of Fame (2007), the Utah Sports Hall of Fame (2008) and the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame (2010).
Lance Hislop said members of his family cherished the time spent traveling to each induction ceremony and they notice how often Weber State inducts one of Chick Hislop’s track and field athletes into the WSU Hall of Fame.
“As a family, it’s kind of fun to be able to brag about him,” he said.
The track at Stewart Stadium is named Hislop Track.
Hislop’s funeral services will be held at Myers Mortuary in Ogden. His viewing will be from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, March 2, and the funeral service will be at 11 a.m. Friday, March 3. The funeral service will also be live-streamed at myers-mortuary.com.