2019 Inductee
Spending 35 years on the job would be enough for most people to “call it a career” when the opportunity to retire came calling.
But that isn’t how it worked for Randy Baker.
After graduating from Manning High School in 1974 and the University of Northern Iowa in ‘78, Randy started and finished his teaching and coaching career at East Marshall High School in LeGrand.
Baker spent some of his 35 years coaching Volleyball, Cross Country, Football and Basketball, but he always coached Track and Field. He spent over 20 years in the classroom teaching high school and middle school math. His last 13 years at East Marshall were spent as the districts Technology Director.
Randy became a registered track official while a student at UNI and found himself more and more involved in officiating as the years went on. He felt it was important to understand and know the rules if he wanted to continue improving as a coach.
When the first track was built in LeGrand in 1988, Randy became very involved in meet management from initial meet set up to the operation of the FAT system. This is something Randy still takes pride in doing, in addition to driving East Marshall track teams to meets.
In 2010, IATO Hall of Fame member, Al Neumann encouraged Randy to get more involved in Track and Field officiating. Not being one to stand on the sidelines, when given the opportunity, Randy did just that.
He regularly works meets at UNI, Iowa State, the University of Iowa, Drake Relays, the American Rivers Conference and the Iowa High School state meet.
Randy and Kathy, his bride of 40 years live in Legrand and have 2 sons, Christopher and Nathen and 3 grandchildren.