“The first time we win a championship, I’m outta here,” said ETSU distance coach David E. Walker, grinning at the thought of his second retirement. “Let’s hope we do it before my 75th birthday. If we win a championship before I’m 75, I’m gone. That gives me something to look forward to, and something to work toward. And the minute I get that team, I’m just gonna say ‘Okay, bye. Here it is. Here’s the championship. I’m outta here.'”
Don’t believe that for a minute, though. Walker is closing on nearly half a century of coaching, through 10 U.S. presidents, seven university presidents, and at least 24 indoor and outdoor track and cross country conference championships.
He has been chosen conference Coach of the Year more times than he can count on his two weathered hands. His teams have placed in the top five for the NCAA five times.
In 2003 he was inducted into the United States Track Coaches Hall of Fame. And most recently, the Southern Conference named their Coach of the Year award after him. David E. Walker is a fixture at ETSU.
For all those accomplishments, Walker, a.k.a. “Coach,” doesn’t allow himself to dwell on the past. No, Walker is thinking about the future.
Walker started coaching the ETSU track team in 1962, just four years after he graduated from the school. Walker first went to Hartwick College in New York, then Wofford College in South Carolina. He was drafted into the Army and stayed enlisted for two years.
He came to ETSU in 1956 to play football and study for a degree in physical education.
After his graduation in 1958, he went to Atlanta to coach high school football and track. But the lure of ETSU was too strong; Walker returned in 1962 to work on his master’s degree.
“Actually, I worked on my master’s, coached football, taught six P.E. classes and coached track and field, all at the same time,” Walker said. “It took some doing, I’ll tell you that.”
In 1965, ETSU decided to add a complete track program to the school, including indoor and outdoor track and cross country. Walker was the logical choice to coach all those teams.
“I said, ‘That’s fine, but I’m cheating the football people because I can’t be both places,'” Walker said. “And they said ‘Well, you know, we’ll make you a deal. We won’t cut your salary, we’ll just switch you.’ At that particular time in ’65, I left football and went strictly track and field.”
Walker, who participated in track and field in high school, proved to be a natural at coaching the sport. After just five seasons, the cross country team won the Ohio Valley Conference championship. Between 1970 and 1977, when ETSU switched to the SoCon, the cross country team won the OVC five times. In 1972, the team placed second in the NCAA championship meet.
That ’72 team was known as the “Irish Brigade.” The brigade began after recruiting trip to Ireland by Walker. He laughs often in recounting that trip.
“One of my boys got the tickets lined up for me,” Walker says, “and of course, he was a typical Irish. He talked a mile a minute and conned you into anything. So he got my ticket and I noticed how cheap it was and I said, ‘Well, better not ask questions,’ because I had to pay for it; the school couldn’t afford to send me over there. So I paid for the ticket, and I got about, I guess probably a third of the way over there in the air, and I finally realized I was the only ‘civilian’ in the airplane.
“They were all priests and nuns. He’d got me on one of those junkets, you know, for the Catholic Church. And I wasn’t even Catholic. And there I was. Of course they found me out about halfway over there.
“But the priest I was sitting with finally found out what I was doing, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll cover for you. You’re going over here to get some good Irish boys to take back to the United States. We’ll cover for you.”
After Walker landed in Ireland he went straight to work, signing two Irishmen to join the two he already had on his ETSU team. The next year the team signed two more.
“Got a couple of Irish kids, and they had a couple of friends,” Walker says. “The first thing you know, I looked around and my whole cross country team was Irish. It worked out pretty good. We started winning, and we won for about 16 or 17 straight years, we won the championships.”
Mark Finucane, an ETSU cross country All-American in 1975 and 1976, recalls Walker’s coaching methods in honing a winning team.
“He was very dedicated, and he had a system,” Finucane says. “He brought runners in that fit his system, and I think that was why he was so successful. It was guys who liked to work hard, he prepared us for the races very well, and the race was easy. He worked us hard; there was no doubt about that. A lot of hills. We’d go out and run 10 miles and then come back some days and do track work. So when we got to the race on Saturday, that was the easy part.”
After his 16-year winning streak, Walker felt it was time to leave ETSU.
“I decided to retire,” Walker says. “I’d been here, I guess, 37 years or something like that the first time.”
Walker’s retirement lasted all of four years. Walker’s replacement, Milan Donley, found out how difficult it is to replace a legend. In the time that Donley was head coach, the cross-country team didn’t win a championship.
“They had to let the track coach go,” Walker says. “When they fired him they asked me if I’d come back. And I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ And they said, ‘We’ll let you stay retired. You don’t have to teach, all you do is coach track and field.’ I said, ‘Well, that sounds pretty good. Who do I answer to?’ And of course, this was the president talking. He said, ‘I don’t see anybody else … me.’
Walker uses the word retired loosely, since he was still in charge of some track meets for ETSU.
“I had a little office in the back of the track office,” Walker says. “But I didn’t have to do any coaching. Except when [Donley] got tired of somebody he’d say, ‘Would you coach this guy for me?’ or ‘Would you coach that girl for me?’ I wasn’t getting paid anything, that was the only difference. I was using my retirement money, so I didn’t care. I had a lot of fun.”
In 2003, three years after he came back from retirement, Walker was inducted into the Track Coaches Hall of Fame.
“The greatest honor I’ve ever got since I’ve been here is out there, that little rectangular thing, there,” Coach says, pointing into the track office. “That’s the Track Coaches Hall of Fame for the whole nation. Never thought I’d get that one. You know, East Tennessee State is not a UT or an Auburn or a Florida or Nebraska, or Villanova, or anything like that. There’s only about 30 or 40 coaches in there and that covers about probably 60, 70 years of track and field in the United States. And to be one of them … that’s the ultimate … that was my thank you.”
Dave Mullins, ETSU’s athletic director, has known Walker for 15 years, and knows what an asset Walker is to the teams he coaches.
“In the world of track and field, Coach Walker is one of the most respected coaches out there,” Mullins says. “We hope he’s with us for a long time.”
Now, with his 75th birthday only two years away, Walker is getting ready to leave ETSU again.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, I’m 73 and when I get to be 75, or maybe quicker, but when I get to be 75, I think I’m outta here,” Walker says. In time for his retirement, Walker is training his team for another championship win. He says that the team is about two years away from that goal.
Finucane has mixed feelings about Walker’s retirement.
“In one way it’s sad because I know he loves coaching, but in another way I’d be really happy for him because I know he likes to travel and see his family,” Finucane says. “But it’ll be a sad day. It’s bittersweet in a lot of ways. I think he would really love to have one more good team and win a conference championship and maybe get to the NCAA.”
Though Walker has left a legendary impression on ETSU, his students have left an impression on him.
“The greatest fun I ever had was having those great kids,” Walker says. “I mean, they could make you look awful good.

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