Alva Review-Courier -

An integral part of the Fairview school and community, Jim Blevins is a native of Kiowa, Kansas, and a 1976 graduate of Northwestern Oklahoma State University. The lifelong educator and coach was recently inducted into the Oklahoma Track Coaches Hall of Fame.

His love of track began when he was a kid growing up with three brothers and a sister in Kiowa. They built their own pole vault and long jump pits. Eventually pole vaulting and hurdles were his favorite track events. Graduating from Kiowa High School in 1971, his excellence in sports took him to Pratt Junior College on scholarship. Blevins continued his athletic excellence at Northwestern in Alva when he ran hurdles, pole-vaulted and was punter for the Rangers football team. Graduating from Northwestern in 1976, he taught in Kansas until finding his way to his ultimate home of Fairview in 1982.

Blevins is an iconic coach at Fairview where he taught and coached until 2014. Now semi-retired, he remains athletic director there. He and his wife Beverly, a Burlington native, raised their two children in Fairview and now have eight grandchildren.

Blevins has a list of accomplishments higher even than he vaulted to success. A few of those are:

• Coached the 1983 and 1993 State Runners-up Championship Track Teams

• Coached the 1994 State Championship Track Team

• Coached the 2008 Academic State Track Team

• Was the 1994 Region I Track Coach of the Year

• Was the 1994 Sideline Volunteer/Scout for the State Football Championships

• Coached the 2004 State Indoor Track Championship Team

In his career Blevins has coached 385 athletes to state track meets in indoor, outdoor and cross-country sports. He's also taught history for 38 years. His focus on academics has inspired his track teams to excel in the classroom as they won seven academic achievement awards and were State Academic Champions five times.

Blevins' hometown newspaper, The Fairview Republican, featured him in an article written by Cosette Wymer regarding his hall of fame honor. In that article Blevins' past student and principal, Brock Robison, was quoted as he introduced Blevins at the induction ceremony: "Coach Blevins has been a teacher, mentor, coach, mediator, cheerleader, disciplinarian, tutor, counselor, role model and friend."

That article states that Blevins' philosophy "has always been for a competitor to be successful they have to want it. And if they don't, they need to do something else." Blevins was also quoted as saying, "When I was coaching, I wanted every kid to go out for track. In track there is no bench. They are going to have success; they may not be champions but they gain confidence which carries over to life."