It’s a cloudy Saturday afternoon in January as Jim Bibbs walks into an empty Jenison Field House, the building which housed his track teams for so many years.
“This was my home,” Bibbs, the 86-year-old former head track coach at MSU, said.
And it was in this home some of Bibbs’ favorite memories took place during his 27-year career, such as the time in 1972 when MSU sprinters Marshall Dill and Herb Washington set a pair of world records in the same night — Dill, a 29.5 in the 300-yard dash, and Washington a 5.8 in the 60-yard dash.
“That is certainly one of the most memorable nights in my career,” Bibbs said.
Simply put, Bibbs is a legend. He arrived in East Lansing in 1968 as the first black coach in MSU history, and in 1975, became the first black head track coach in Big Ten history.
Whether it be the 52 Big Ten champions he’s coached, the 26 All-Americans, or the three NCAA champions, his accomplishments at MSU are remarkable.
But ask anyone, as impressive as the athletic achievements Bibbs guided his athletes to are, so too are the hundreds of young people’s lives he impacted along the way.
Getting on track
For Bibbs, his love for sports began when he was growing up in Ecorse, a town located 20 minutes southwest of Detroit.
When Bibbs got to high school, he became a three-sport athlete in football, basketball and baseball at Ecorse High School, but it wasn’t until Bibbs’ senior year that he discovered his talent in track and field.
“The track coach was my history teacher and between the track coach and some of the members of the (track) team, they saw me in gym class, and they saw I was pretty fast,” Bibbs said. “So they put a full court press on me to come out for track.”
In Bibbs’ lone season on the Ecorse track team, he made it to the Class B state meet in the 100-yard dash and the long jump, taking second place in the long jump.
Bibbs used his strong senior season at Ecorse and earned himself a spot on the Eastern Michigan University track team. It was there Bibbs really began coming into his own.
However, while Bibbs was becoming one of the best young talents in track and field at EMU, he was still excelling in the semipro baseball leagues he was playing in the summer back home in Ecorse, and was even offered a contract by the New York Yankees.
Bibbs was forced to choose between his two loves. Up until Bibbs joined the track team his senior year of high school, baseball was by far his best sport, but a short conversation with his father had his mind made up.
“My dad was bent on me graduating from college,” Bibbs said. “Baseball to him was fun. ... So when I had mentioned to him about what the Yankees offered ... he said, ‘No, you’re going back to school and finishing up your degree.’ So that ended that. I was not going to argue with my dad.”
When Bibbs returned to EMU his junior year, that’s when his track career really began to take off. It was that year in 1951 that Bibbs clocked a 60-yard dash in 6.1 seconds in a meet at Notre Dame, which was fast enough to tie Jesse Owens’ then-world record in the event.
For the next two years, Bibbs was taken to some of the top track meets in the country and if not for a pulled muscle in 1952, would have competed in the Olympic Trials that year.
But where Bibbs would truly leave his mark, lay in the next 50-plus years of his life.
Coaching legacy
Bibbs would compete in the sport for a few more years while he earned his master’s degree in physical education from Wayne State University.
Soon after that, Bibbs began teaching and coaching in the Detroit school system. It was around the same time also that Bibbs founded the Detroit Track Club, a team he led to five girls’ national relay championships in the 1960s.
And as a teacher and head track coach at Ecorse High School in the 1960s, Bibbs led a successful track program, which won the state championship in 1967.
A year later in 1968, Bibbs was hired as an assistant track coach at MSU, making him the first black coach in school history, and when Fran Dittrich retired in 1975, Bibbs was promoted to head coach, and became the first black head track coach in the Big Ten.
At the time, while Bibbs recognized he might have been a role model for African Americans, he said he tried to never look into his accomplishments as a black man, but rather as just a person.
“I just tried to do the best job I could do,” Bibbs said. “I knew that I was the only (black coach) ... and I had the awareness I wanted to succeed mainly because I was the only one. But I just tried to do the best job I could do because I loved coaching and I loved youngsters.”
Bibbs went on to have a storied career at MSU until he retired in 1995. But beyond the countless athletes he trained into becoming Big Ten champions or All-Americans, Bibbs’ favorite part of the job was helping young people.
“I think as a coach or as a teacher, our job is to make young women out of young girls and young men out of young boys,” Bibbs said. “I think that should be all teachers’ and coaches’ purpose. ... I want them to be successful at life, not just running races for me.”
In many cases, Bibbs prepared his athletes to achieve even more success after college. One of those athletes was Karen Dennis, an athlete Bibbs began coaching with the Detroit Track Club when she was 13-years-old.
After Dennis graduated from MSU, she coached the U.S. women’s track team for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, and today is the head track coach of Ohio State University.
“He touched everybody’s life and he made everybody feel special,” Dennis said. “He was able to be a great coach while at the same time being a great humanitarian.”
Current president of Lansing City Council and 1984 Olympic silver medalist Judi Brown Clarke is another one of Bibbs’ former athletes he helped mentor and coach.
While Clarke was at MSU, she said Bibbs was not only someone she could call at 2 a.m. if she wanted to work on something related to track, but for many athletes such as herself, Bibbs was so much more than a track coach.
“There was just something about him, and I think most students and athletes figured out really quick that he truly cared about you and he wanted you to be successful,” Clarke said. “There was just something about him where he really knew how to bring out not only the best in his athletes, but he made every athlete that he worked with, feel that he was very centric to their success.”
Sticking around
As he sat on the infield of MSU’s track at Ralph Young Field at the 2015 Big Ten Outdoor Track and Field Championships, Bibbs was nothing but smiles.
Bibbs was in attendance not only to keep tabs on a program he’s been involved with for nearly half a century, but also to hand out medals at the meet.
Bibbs has never left East Lansing and, even after retiring from MSU, has served as a volunteer track coach at East Lansing High School.
In addition to this, Bibbs has stayed heavily involved in the MSU program, something current MSU Director of Cross Country and Track and Field Walt Drenth makes sure of.
“His presence is so meaningful to the community,” Drenth said. “His track and field knowledge is immense but his presence in the community is, I think, really important. ... I thought it was important to have a guy that had his reputation and background around the program.”
For the past decade, Drenth has consistently asked Bibbs to speak with the team, and has even started giving out the Jim and Martha Bibbs Award, an MVP award named after Bibbs and his wife, at every season’s track banquet, Drenth said.
And when Bibbs was inducted into the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame in 2015 — one of five Hall of Fames Bibbs is a member of — Drenth accompanied Bibbs and his wife to San Antonio to serve as his escort at the induction ceremony.
“He’s my favorite coach,” Bibbs said.
And as Bibbs took in the 2015 Big Ten championship from the infield last spring, catching up with many of his former athletes — some of which have gone on to become Olympians, successful politicians or head coaches of their own college track programs — in Bibbs’ eyes, one thing will always be certain.
There’s no sport like track and field.
