Ames 1972 (Charter Member)
Hiram “Hi” Covey was born April 12, 1905 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where he was raised, competed for Oskaloosa High School and William Penn College. As many boys of his day, his father died when he was sixteen-years-old and had to work to support his mother and three younger siblings while he went through high school and college. Hi played football, basketball, and ran track of Oskaloosa High School from 1922-1925 were he captained the football team and won the State Meet 440-Yard Dash in 1925. Upon graduation Hi attended William Penn College in Oskaloosa and captained the football team in 1929. In 1930 Hi graduated and started his teaching and coaching career in Winfield, Iowa, moved to Odebolt in 1934, then to Cherokee in 1939, His 1938 football team won the league title and his track teams won league titles all five years., and on to Ames in 1944. As most coaches of that era, he coached all sports offered by the school district. Hi coached football, basketball, girls basketball, baseball, track and girls softball.
In the summer of 1944, Hi, with the help of some of his athletes including Rollie Knight, later a professor at Iowa State, built the Ames track and field facility off Lincoln Way. His Ames High track teams won every league meet but one during his tenure and also won the Iowa State High School AA Outdoor Track and Field Meets nine times – 1949, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1963, 1964, and 1965. His Ames teams also won the State Indoor meet each of those years as well but for 1955 when he returned the State Meet trophy after discovering an athlete that had turned twenty before the meet. In his career, he coached track thirty-one years winning thirty-one District and thirty conference team titles.
Hi retired from coaching at Ames High in 1965 following a serious stroke suffered while teaching a sociology class. Hi was a Charter inductee into the Ames High School Athletics Hall of Fame, the Iowa Association of Track Coaches Hall of Fame and was posthumously inducted into the U.S.A. Track & Field Coaches Hall of Fame.