Jermaine Jones reads an important poem to his track team. The poem, "See it Through," written by Edgar Albert Guest, is pertinent in his life, almost 90 years after the piece's conception.
The first-year head coach recalls from memory one of his favorite lines, reading it several times to the gathered athletes: "But remember you are facing, just what other men have met."
The lines are a metaphor for his first year as head coach for a men's track team on the verge of extinction.
Jones became just the third black head coach in Ball State history when he was given the job and is currently the only black head coach at the university.
"I really don't get into color lines as far as being here and my job goes. Obviously, it's a unique situation, but it's nothing fancy to me," Jones said. "It's a job that they think I'm qualified to do and it really wouldn't matter what color I was."
Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham attempts to implement diversity through hiring candidates such as Jones, keeping standard with the athletics department diversity plan, which focuses both on race and gender.
"Institutionally, we all need to be supportive of ways to increase opportunities for minorities, and I think we've done that," Cunningham said. "The percent of applications from women and minorities is low, so you have to aggressively seek qualified candidates for those positions."
Jones, who had been an undergraduate coaching assistant for the team in previous seasons, was given the head coaching spot in the final year of the program's existence because Ball State could no longer fund the men's track team.
"It's important to keep in mind that we've discontinued track on an intercollegiate basis. We can participate at the club level and individuals can compete in the sport of track and field, it's just that we're not going to be able to afford it on an intercollegiate basis," Cunningham said.
Holding a position that will no longer exist in three months does not dishearten Jones, who encourages team members to not only share in this outlook, but also be prepared for the cutting of the team.
"The only thing I try to teach them is that, away from athletics, you still have a job to do as a Ball State student," Jones said. "The athletic part doesn't really matter. You came here to go to school and that's what you do first."
Jones' personal academic experience has been difficult with many setbacks, but he plans to receive his master's degree at the end of the current semester.
"That's something that as an African-American male I take everywhere with pride," Jones said.
In 1991, Jones graduated from Northrop High School, going to Indiana University afterward. Jones was not successful and flunked out of college. Afterward, he was forced into a summer job at McDonald's.
A turning point came, though, when Anderson University track coach Larry Maddox pulled up to the drive-thru at McDonald's. Jones took his order and as Maddox pulled around the two recognized each other.
Maddox knew Jones from his high school playing days at Northrop. Forty-five minutes later, Maddox returned with an application to attend Anderson and an offer to Jones: "If I get this back, I'll know you're serious."
When the application inadvertently fell from Jones' backpack six months later, he took it as a sign and filled it out on the spot, receiving an acceptance letter four days later.
Jones believes the transfer was necessary for him to graduate considering his academic decline at Indiana. His education helped him reach his goal as a collegiate track coach, something he strived to do to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a recreational athletics coach.
"My father did not put me in this situation with my education and helping me get into school to have me fall back into that type of position," Jones said. "Not that there was a lot expected of me, but I was capable of more and I knew it."
Achieving great success for Anderson track and field, Jones obtained All-American status in the discus. However, a particularly difficult situation with a coach left him frustrated and on the verge of quitting the sport.
The death of his father during that same period, though, inspired him to continue with his efforts.
"The last thing he told me was 'Whatever you do, don't quit. I didn't raise you to be a quitter and you love this,'" Jones said. "I took that and I ran with it. There's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't try to live up to his standards."
Both his father and Danny Nolan, who coached football on the high school level, have been role models for Jones.
"They basically reared me and made me the man that I am to this day. Everything I've become, everything I strive to do, it's in order or in line with what they have taught me," Jones said. "I came into coaching because my dad was a coach."
Jones first got into athletics because of his father, who emphasized doing something well and not quitting.
"That was really my drive and motivated me to this day," Jones said. "I'm in this situation because I'm not a quitter and I'm not going to stop fighting until they say it's over."
"And then I'll just say, 'I did all that I could.'"
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