By Dylan Fink | Sports Writer
Baylor honored a former coaching legend in Waco over the weekend, hosting the inaugural Clyde Hart Classic on Friday and Saturday. The Bears won both 4×100 relays and the men’s 4×400 relays at the meet.
Hart, who passed away on Nov. 1, 2025, was the head track and field coach at Baylor for over 40 years and the director of track and field for 15 years. Current head coach Michael Ford christened the meet in Hart’s honor.
“When I decided to change the name of the meet, it was more just of an honor because he coached for 50-plus years and didn’t have a meet named after him,” Ford said. “I think it’s just making sure that we continue to live out everything that he taught us as coaches. He was a great coach and a great person, so I’m looking forward to just keep honoring his name and keep the tradition of excellence as we go.”
Over the weekend, the Bears came away with five event titles in their second outdoor meet of the season. First-place finishes were taken by Baylor in the women’s and men’s 4x100m relay, women’s 3000m steeplechase, women’s pole vault and men’s 4x400m relay.
The 4x400 finish was fitting for the final event of the meet, as the relay was historically Hart’s best-coached event during his Baylor tenure. Hart’s men’s 4×400-meter relay teams earned outdoor All-America status in 26 of the last 29 years and captured 20 NCAA titles combined in indoors and outdoors.
“I would like to think he had his stopwatch in hand up in heaven,” Ford said of the 4x400 win.
The four-man team was a showing of underclassman dominance as freshman Bailey Hashmi joined sophomores Malik Franklin, Austen Diggs and Abbas Ali in the event.
The “B” squad for the Bears dominated out of the blocks, posting a 3:08.44 final time. Hashmi saw the fastest time of the foursome with a 46.79 in the third lap.
“The guys decided who was going to run on the relays this week,” Ford said. “I made a call on the team that actually won because [graduate sprinter Laurenz Colbert] tweaked his hip a little bit. I put Austen and Bailey in the middle, and they ran great. So they may be on the ‘A’ relay now. But we’ll definitely need to run a lot better coming up in a couple weeks.”
Freshman Evanna Jacobsen won her first collegiate 3,000-meter steeplechase. Jacobsen snatched her first-place finish with a time of 11:10.52, the best 3000m steeplechase finish in the Big 12 this season.
The Bears began the meet similarly to how they finished, with men’s and women’s teams sweeping the 4x100m. The men’s team posted a 39.89 while the women clocked a 42.31, a time that ranks 12th nationally so far this season.
The Bears will host two more outdoor meets in Waco throughout April, with the Baylor Invitational (April 10) and Michael Johnson Invitational (April 24-25). Next for the green and gold, though, is a journey to Austin to compete in the Texas Relays starting Wednesday.
