Keith Wilemon is recognized as the boys track and field Coach of the Year in Alabama by Morgan County Schools superintendent Billy Hopkins Jr. | Clif Knight

The coach who took Falkville High School’s boy’s track and field team under his wings 28 years ago is being honored as the boys track and field Coach of the Year in Alabama.

The award is given annually by the National Federation of State High School Coaches Association. Keith Wilemon is the 2014 recipient.

In recognition of the award, Wilemon was presented a certificate of achievement by Morgan County Schools Superintendent Bill Hopkins Jr. at a school board meeting Thursday night. He will also receive an award to commemorate the honor during All-Star Week in Montgomery next summer.

Wilemon said he was taken by surprise when he was notified of his selection.

“It’s a tremendous honor,” he noted, “but I look at it as more of a staff honor than an individual achievement. “ My wife Karen and our son Jace both coach track and field, and they have as much to do with the success of the program as I do.”

The Wilemons led the boy’s team to its second straight state champions in 2014, and a state record for total number of points earned in a state competition. The boy’s team has won four other state championships and has been runner-up champion 10 times. The girl’s team has won two state championships.

Wilemon and Tim Miller, a former head football coach at Falkville High, organized the boy’s track and field program in the spring of 1990.  A girl’s team was added two years later after Karen Wilemon began her teaching career at Falkville High.

“The number of kids participating has increased gradually over the years,”  Wilemon stated.  “Last year, we had 45 and the number is up to 50 this season. We have had as many as 63.”

A high school football player and a mile runner, Wilemon smiled when he was asked about how he got into coaching track.

“I grew up in the country and ran a lot and we had a football coach who made us run a lot,” Wilemon explained. “In the spring, he’d round up a few of us football players to run track. I think he did it more to keep us in shape than to see us compete with other schools in our area. However, at the end of the season he would take five runners to district but I never made the cut.

“My first teaching job was at Winfield where I also coached track and field for three years. Ironically, I was coaching before I went to my first track meet.”

Wilemon credited hard work and discipline as being the backbone of his track and field athletes’ success.

“Our kids want to be successful,” he pointed out. Since 2007, they have reached the point where they want to be part of a state championship team and uphold the winning tradition of their predecessors.”

“We have been very fortunate to have very good 4×400 and 4×800 meter relay teams in recent years,” he added. “One of our teams holds a state record in the 4×800.

‘We tell out kids they will get out of track and field what they put into it,” Wilemon said.

In addition to coaching track and field, Wilemon was a football assistant and head coach for 12 years. He has also served as assistant principal for 15 years.