I was saddened to read the featured sports page article in the Albuquerque Journal covering the passing of Coach Hugh Hackett. Coach Hackett was a wonderful person who touched many lives around him, both in and out of sports.
My name is Steve Maier. I am an Albuquerque native. I graduated from Sandia High School and UNM. My father, Jerry Maier, introduced me years ago to Coach Hackett.
My father was a coach for years in Albuquerque and was a close personal friend of Coach Hackett. I currently live in Missoula, Mont. The story I want to share is how Coach Hackett touched my life and the life of my youngest son, Darby. I believe that Darby is likely the last athlete that Coach Hackett ever coached before his passing.
Last year, on a visit to Albuquerque, my father contacted Coach Hackett to notify him that we were in town and that Darby was beginning to compete in track and field events at his high school in Missoula.
Darby was then a freshman and was beginning his first year of track and field competition as a thrower of the shot put, discus and javelin. (Darby has also begun throwing the hammer in USA Track and Field competition meets, but before meeting Coach Hackett last August, he had never had any formal training of any type with throwing this device). On a sunny afternoon in August 2009, we met with Coach Hackett at Highland High School where he wanted to work with Darby and give him a private one-on-one coaching session.
Initially, we were hesitant to meet with Coach Hackett, knowing that he was now 89 years of age and thinking that there was
probably little he could do to help a high-school-aged thrower.
But we decided to meet with him anyway, mostly just to honor my father’s wishes that we meet with Coach Hackett. We never could have predicted the results that would flow out of that short afternoon meeting with Coach Hackett.
Coach Hackett arrived at Highland with a car trunk full of old, rusty, antique-looking throwing implements. He had beaten-up shot puts of various sizes, rotting old wooden discuses with rusted and dented metal rings, a bent and dull javelin, and an old hammer with a bent wire and a makeshift throwing handle. When he arrived in his car, he got out, popped his trunk, and started tossing these implements out one by one onto the dirt parking area, narrowly missing our feet as well as his own.
From there, he directed us to gather the throwing implements and carry them over to a small throwing pad in a corner of a lot behind the Highland High School gym.
Coach Hackett commenced to coach Darby in throwing techniques for all four of these throwing devices — the shot put, discus, javelin and hammer.
He started by observing Darby’s footwork and throwing technique.
This school year, as a high school freshman, Darby was his high school’s most valuable freshman athlete and won the varsity’s “most valuable thrower” award. The most valuable thrower award had never before been awarded to a freshman thrower at his high school. Darby had a successful high school season, upsetting multiple favored athletes in all of his throwing events, and breaking his school’s freshman throwing records for both the shot put and the discus.
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Following his high school season, Darby decided to continue competing in the 2010 USATF state, regional, and national track meets. In his state and regional competitions, he took either gold or silver in all four throwing events. In the USATF nationals, he medaled in three of his four throwing events. At the end of 2010, Darby had achieved All-American honors as a hammer thrower and as a discus thrower.
Most amazing of all was his second-place national finish in the hammer throw after having received only one afternoon of formal coaching from Coach Hackett, on a small corner dirt lot at Highland High School one August afternoon in the summer of 2009.
We feel honored to have been blessed with the golden touch of Coach Hugh Hackett’s one-of-a-kind coaching skills — skills he retained even to his final day on earth.
God bless coach Hugh Hackett!
