A Shine-ing light: This will be final Mehock Relays for Tygers coach in a relationship that spans 7 decades
MANSFIELD – It was 1966, a simpler time, when kids spent most of their waking hours playing outside instead of hunkered down indoors with their video games.
Where was Minecraft 57 years ago?
Why couldn’t it have been around to keep Tyree Shine busy instead of that game of hide-and-seek that went terribly wrong?
“We were playing in the neighborhood late at night,” Shine said, “and the chain (around my neck) broke.”
Gone forever was the gold medal he won in the elementary school 440-yard relay, which back then was part of Mehock Relays weekend. It was a proud moment for Shine and his buddies on that Hedges Elementary crew – Effie James Sr., Danny Jones and Larry Beard
It was a race Shine will never forget, for reasons both prideful and painful, as track and field enthusiasts get ready for the 90th running of the Relays this Saturday at Mehock Field.
“I never could find it,” Shine said of his gold medal. “It hurts me still today.”
As a coach, Shine would celebrate countless championship performances at the Mehock by his athletes, including a sweep of all three dashes (100, 200 and 400) by Mansfield Senior’s Keontez Bradley in 2022.
Ironically, his lost medal was the only Mehock gold Shine earned in an illustrious sprint career that would lead to him competing for Ohio State, setting national marks for the Ohio Track Club and bidding for a spot in the Olympic Trials.
All of his Mehock memories, spanning seven – yes, seven – decades as a competitor and coach, are among those he cherishes most.
“As a little kid I always respected coach (Harry) Mehock,” said Shine of the Tyger legend and founder of what originally was called the Mansfield Relays. “It was just a big community event to me that I looked forward to running in.
“I remember as a kid we used to jump over the fence (at Mehock Field), because it was locked, and we had to put our coats up there because it had barbed wire at the top. We’d go out there on the track and run and practice and then jump back over the fence before people would see us.”
The Mehock was like ‘being in the Olympics’
Shine, a 1974 Malabar High School graduate, ran in the Mehock Relays when it was in its heyday. The competition was so stiff his senior year that his 880-yard relay team did not sniff first place.
That quartet was filled with college-bound athletes. Shine led off, followed by Donnie Luckie (Capital), Larry Beard (Bowling Green) and Terry Carter (Kent State). They went on to finish third in the state meet and then a week later, in the Ohio Classic, won that race, beating the two teams that finished in front of them at state.
“As a kid, man, (the Mehock) was like being in the Olympics; it was just that big,” Shine said. “It was all I dreamed about as a kid. And then I got to run in it against great competition.
“It was a childhood dream come true. I always wanted to be a coach, an Olympian. God be the glory, because he gave me the talent and the ability to run and be a coach.”
Shine will soon have plenty of time for even more reflection because he plans to retire after 47 years of coaching at the end of this season. And, since you’re wondering, there was no talk on his end about extending his career another three years to make it an even 50.
“I could go on a lot longer than that, man,” Shine, 66, said. “I love coaching. I’m still enthused about it. I’ve got good health. I just want to spend more time with my family.”
Shine has three children and nine grandchildren. His daughter, Cheryl Hood Walker, was a star sprinter under his tutelage, owning the school record for the 100 dash (11.9) for 12 years.
“I’m not retiring because my wife is deceased,” Shine said. “We talked a couple years back about planning to do things with family. And I just want to do some simple things. I love fishing, walking and hiking, but I never had time. That time was always with somebody’s kids.”
Now he’ll be able to focus on his kids. And their kids.
Besides, even though he said it’s purely coincidence, there’s a perfect symmetry to year 47 being his last. He knew his wife, Daisy, who passed last November, for 47 years (they would have celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary on May 6). And she was born in ‘47.
“I’ve had a good life, my wife had a good life and we had a beautiful life together,” Shine said. “She supported (my coaching). She loved track and would be (at meets) herself. She was my biggest supporter, my biggest critic and my best friend.”
He connects with kids at the ground level
Shine started helping out at Malabar while he was attending Ohio State and was on board when the girls were state runners-up in 1978. He joined forces with Stan Jefferson at the school and they stayed together when Mansfield Senior and Malabar consolidated, with Jefferson as head coach and Shine as a sprint coach, working primarily with the girls.
They were together for 21 years and, remarkably, had at least one state qualifier every year.
When Jefferson moved into administration, Shine continued to run the summer AAU track program he founded and also helped out at the high school, eventually taking over as head coach of the Tyger boys and girls in 2017.
“There’s an old saying, some people teach and coach from the top down, from 30,000 feet down, but the great teachers, the great coaches, connect with people at the ground level,” said Jefferson, the superintendent of Mansfield City Schools. “We were connected to the kids and were connectors to the next rite of passage. Where are you going to go once you leave Malabar? What do you want to do after you leave Mansfield Senior?
“Our job was to provide you with opportunities for your next stop. Our job was to get you there.”
They certainly knew how to get kids to the finish line. Jefferson coached at a Hall of Fame level in track and football and Shine took his skills as an athlete and applied it to his coaching, providing guidance to, among countless others, four state champion girls sprint relay teams.
Even as a sexagenarian, he’s been known to get hands-on and demonstrate on the track what he wants done. You’d expect nothing less from someone who at 40 was competing in Masters races and running 100 meters in 11 seconds.
When Shine was at his peak as a sprinter, and had a shot at possibly competing in the Olympic Trials, that’s when the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games. As a Buckeye his best times were 10.36 in the 100 meters and 21.3 in the 200 meters. He also ran for the Ohio Track Club and was part of a sprint medley relay team that competed in college meets and had the best time, based on NCAA results, in the nation.
“He’s funny, but he knows how to switch it off and tell us how to work,” Tyger hurdler Aaron Thornton said. “He’ll joke with us, but he’ll get us right back on track. I love how he does that. It shows us there’s a time to joke and a time to be serious.”
Thornton and Bradley, a state medalist sprinter, were running for Shine on his Blessed To Run summer track club before they were teenagers. The club has taken on different names over the years, but the aim was always to build kids, ages 5-18, physically, spiritually and emotionally.
Shine’s first club was called the Bundini Striders after former Muhammad Ali cornerman and assistant trainer Bundini Brown.
“The kids called me Bundini because they thought I was an inspiration to them like Bundini was to Ali,” Shine said. “Everybody who grew up with me, I was always like a coach, organizing and setting up things. Everybody was at my house on the weekend and we’d (pretend to) have Junior Olympics out front of the house. We’d do things like jump over the clothesline for the high jump. We’d watch Wide World of Sports on TV and then go outside and practice stuff.
“I grew up with those kids and then coached their kids. They respected my gift as a coach and my ability to help their kids. We was like family.”
'He changed the trajectory of our lives’
That’s certainly how Tyger assistant coach Chioke Bradley and his sons, Keontez and Mekhi, feel about Shine. Three generations of their family have been impacted by him.
Shine ran against Stanley Tillman, Chioke’s father, in high school. Shine was on the staff when Chioke ran hurdles and sprints for Mansfield Senior’s state runner-up track team in 1994. That would be the highest finish by any Tyger team until the football team, with Chioke as head coach, matched it in 2019.
And now Keontez and Mekhi, a thrower on the track team, get to finish their careers under Shine’s watch.
“He’s probably changed the trajectory of our lives,” said Keontez, an Arizona State football commit. “He’s been my coach since, like, 6 years old … AAU track in the summertime. It’s been great. That’s why it’s hard for me to take days off. I’m trying to do everything for him and my dad, always thinking about coach Shine and my team, however I can better them. I’m going to keep working, grinding.”
Being part of Shine’s final high school team is easy for Thornton to put into words.
“It means everything, especially for me and Keontez,” he said. “He’s coached us since we were little kids. For this to be his last year, we want to go out with a bang. We feel like we’re going to give it our all, and he’s going to give us his all.”
Shine couldn’t be with the team last week at the Lexington Invitational, so Chioke stepped in for him. He probably felt like that was the least he could do.
“Tyree’s essentially been part of my entire life, man, in some capacity,” he said. “When I was younger he was a big track name, running against my dad and so many greats like Jeff Jenkins and Terry Carter and all of them. He was one of those pillars that pushed our track program in Mansfield in the direction it is now.
“He’s taken Keontez all over the country to run (in the summer). It’s just been a blessing for him to be part of all of our lives.”
Coaching was his calling
In 2017, Shine’s first year as head coach of the Tygers, Joe Ellis cleared 6-10 to win a state high jump title. A couple of years later Angelo Grose finished third in the long jump and would have been a favorite to win it all as a senior had he not left early to kick start his Michigan State football career.
Last season, as far as anybody can tell, the Tygers had two state medalists in the high jump for the first time in school history as Maurice Ware took runner-up honors and Amil Upchurch finished seventh.
It’s no mistake that some of the greatest quarter milers (400 meters) in the city’s rich track history came along during Shine’s coaching career, including Malabar’s 1988 state champion April Robinson and fellow Malabar stars George Swarn and Derrick Franklin, both state runners-up.
“Tyree believed to have a complete sprint program you had to run the quarter,” Jefferson said. “So we didn’t have sprinters. Everybody was a quarter miler.
“Our philosophy was if it came down to the last event, it was a quartermile event – the 4x400 meter (or mile) relay. We trained our sprinters to be quartermilers, so when you ran the 100 meters that was nothing. When you ran the 200 meters that was nothing. We felt like we had to train our guys like college track athletes.”
Jefferson knew that the sprints were in good hands with Shine and fellow assistant Khalil Ali, who preceded Shine as Tyger head coach and is now the sprints coach at Westerville Central. They picked up techniques from some of the top college programs in the country, like Tennessee, Baylor and LSU. They used plyometrics, water workouts and parachute running, which were far from common practices at the high school level.
“In 1992, “ Jefferson said, “we set 10 conference records because all of our kids, boys and girls, were training with parachutes.”
Shine, an ordained minister since 1996, has preached accountability since Day One in his stint as head coach. His mantra became “Step Up or Step Out.” If he was going to invest a lot of time in the kids, they had to buy in and invest the time as well.
“One time,” Shine said, “I was out on the track with Mo (Ware) and he said to me, ‘Man, have you ever thought about how many hours you spent out here on the track?’
“Mornings, afternoons, nights, AAU … I couldn’t even count the hours or kids. I know off the top of my head I had more than 100 kids who went to college. As far as how many kids I coached, I don’t know, it’s probably up in the thousands.
“I just love to serve. I think that was my calling.”
When Jefferson thinks of all the lives Shine has touched he is reminded of something said by Dr. Cornel West, a philosopher, political activist and former Harvard University professor.
“He said you can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people,” Jefferson said. “And you can’t save the people if you don’t serve the people. So if you’re going to be in education and coaching, you better be in the loving and serving business.”
Shine gets it. Always has.
“Tyree is a tremendous coach,” Jefferson said, “but he’s also a tremendous person.”
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Mansfield Senior Track and Field coach Tyree Shine touched many lives in 47 years
