Red Simmons points proudly to a picture showcasing a shot of his life’s work: an image of the University of Michigan’s first women’s track and field team. Not only was Simmons (MSNC ’33) the team’s first coach, he spearheaded the sport during a time nationally when women’s sports were barely recognized or respected.

Simmons, now 98 and living in Ann Arbor, spent most of his life overcoming career and personal obstacles. Those experiences, first as a hard-scrabbled student-athlete at Michigan State Normal College and later as a coach at U-M, made success second nature to him. He conveyed his knowledge and experiences to scores of female athletes during decades of coaching.

“I attribute my success partly to the study of anatomy. It has improved everything I’ve done and my coaching, too,” Simmons said. The 1933 MSNC graduate learned the fundamentals of anatomy from legendary EMU coach Elton J. Rynearson. By applying the principles of this subject to sports, it changed not only his life as an athlete but also the lives of the student-athletes he would coach.

“What makes a runner besides ability? It’s leverage (through anatomy),” said Simmons, who was inducted into the E-Club Athletic Hall of Fame in 1978. (He has also served on the EMU Alumni Association Board of Directors.)
“All the girls I coached used weights before they were acceptable (as a fitness technique),” he said. Doing so fueled success for athletes like Francea Kracker Goodridge, the first native-born Michigan woman to win a place on the United States Olympic team (in 1972.) Goodridge credited her success to Simmons’ overall training for strength and flexibility. Other successful athletes who benefited from his teachings were Penny Near, captain of the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, and Lisa Larsen (Weidenbach) Rainsberger, the first woman to win the Boston Marathon.

In 1960, Simmons founded the women’s track and field program at U-M, and in 1976, started the first Ann Arbor’s women’s track and field club – called the Michigammes – with seven girls, including Goodridge. He was inspired to start the program after seeing the American women’s track and field team perform poorly at the 1960 Olympics. The club evolved to became a varsity team in 1978, spurred on by the passage of regulations clarifying Title IX, a 1972 federal law calling for equal treatment of men and women “under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

The U-M women’s team went on to win seven national championships and 19 state championships among other awards. Before Title IX, no nationally recognized intercollegiate competition existed for women.

Simmons’ relentless drive comes from years of intense competition and training. “It makes you more of a competitor and fighter in everyday life,” Simmons said. His drive started early as he faced economic hardships for most of his youth and in college. He grew up poor and his parents had little formal education. But “their lack of schooling didn’t stop them from instilling values of respect for people and to know and stay true to yourself,” Simmons said.
He would overcome those barriers through athletic achievement. A grade school teacher was the first to recognize his athletic talent and encouraged Simmons’ parents to send him to high school. “I might not have gone to high school if it weren’t for him,” Simmons said.

Simmons, who grew up in Redford, Mich., first started running in seventh grade and later became a champion athlete at Redford High School. He ran track, was captain of the football team and even came up with the name of the high school’s sport team, “the Huskies.”

“As a freshman, I could be on varsity. I inherited a speed (that) I could do without thinking,” said Simmons. His running was on at extremely advanced level and was achieved without much training. As a result, Lloyd Olds, track coach at MSNC, contacted Simmons in 1929 about attending in Ypsilanti. Simmons would not have been able to afford college if for the generosity of a Detroit principal who loaned him the money. Simmons’ only means of transportation to Ypsilanti was to hitchhike.

Since he could not buy any books, Simmons’ grades suffered. At one point, he faced expulsion by President Charles McKenny. But after he won the interclass track meet, Olds and others encouraged the president to give Simmons another chance.

Olds helped Simmons find a way to pay for school by cleaning mats and washing windows and floors. “In those days, you didn’t have scholarships,” Simmons said. In his spare time from school and work, he traveled to major track and field competitions and ran individually and on a relay team. The pinnacle of his college career was competing in the Penn Relays and qualifying for the Olympic Trials in 1932, where he ran 400 meters in 54.2 seconds. “I hitchhiked to California to compete, and it took almost six days,” Simmons said. He placed sixth in the finals.

“There’s an element of luck in everything, but you have got to keep on trying because anything can happen. I did my very best, and that’s the best I can do (and) that’s the lesson you take out of track sports,” Simmons said.
Though Simmons is retired, he and his wife, Lois Simmons, remain strong forces in the athletic community at U-M, where they push to encourage academic excellence.

For Simmons, it remains all about pushing one’s self in every aspect of your life. “Why did I do this or that or want certain things? I’m now convinced it was because of where I was living and the conditions I lived in. I saw how other kids lived in high school, and we only had oil lamps and outhouses,” he said. “It was the desire to get out of the ‘mud’ where we lived. I was a poor kid who’s got nothing. But as a star athlete, you got recognition,” said Simmons.