April 21, 2014

By: Josh McSwain, Student Writer

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Carjay Lyles began his lifelong love of track and field twenty years ago when, as a ten-year-old, he began entering meets in the 100, 400, and 800-meter runs.  Fast forward eight years to Lyles' career as a collegiate athlete, racing for the University of Tennessee, and again to his time as a post-collegiate athlete and coach, and you will see the path that has led him to the newest stage in his increasingly-impressive career: Assistant Coach at the University of Missouri in charge of the sprints, hurdles, and horizontal jumps.

Looking back on the past two decades, Lyles has had many memorable moments, the foremost being during the 2007 SEC Championships during his time as a Tennessee Volunteer.  Thinking it might be his last meet as an athlete due to injuries suffered throughout his career, Lyles' family attended the Championship meet.  Despite having to switch legs in the triple jump, which Lyles described as similar to "a right-handed baseball hitter switching and hitting left", he overcame the pain and placed sixth in the field with a personal record performance of 49 feet and 9.25 inches.

But even through all his time as a student-athlete, Lyles knew he wanted to coach someday.

"I wanted to be a coach since I was in the sixth grade," Lyles said. "We had to do a goal sheet and I wrote down 'be a coach at a Univeresity,' and since then everything has been about 'what can I do to get there?'"

First, however, Lyles wanted to see his career as a competitor come to a close.  After his graduation from Tennessee in 2008, Lyles went to train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center under Al Joyner, the 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist in the triple jump.  Lyles tore up his knee during his first competition as a post-collegiate athlete, putting an end to his career and pointing him towards his next step as a full-time coach.

During his time with Joyner, Lyles said he learned how to not only run events, but also how to "do track."  Joyner raised Lyles' expectations for what greatness was, and how passionate he was about his athletes.

"He didn't sleep unless we had what we needed to be successful, and made sure he taught us so that when we stepped out there we knew we were more prepared than anyone else," Lyles said of Joyner, who he still maintains a close relationship with, speaking "five or sixt imes a week" despite their hectic schedules.

Lyles stepped into the coaching sphere with quite a bit of experience already under his belt, working as a private coach in Atlanta while still in high school, then as a graduate assistant with Tennessee from 2007 - 2008.  He did a stint helping at the U.S. Olympic Training Center until 2009 before getting hired on as an Assistant Coach at San Diego State University.

While with the Aztecs, Lyles helped lead the program to their most successful season in school history, producing six All-Americans under his leadership, including the 2013 NCAA Champion in the triple jump, Shanieka Thomas.

Lyles departed the west coast in the fall of 2013 for Columbia, where he joined the staff at Mizzou.  Part of the draw for him was the return to the SEC and the opportunity to compete against some of the best coaches in the nation.

"You look at guys like Mike Holloway at the University of Florida, Pat Henry and Vince Anderson at Texas A&M, and Curtis Frye at the University of South Carolina, and these are coaching legends.  Those guys have won more National Championshiops than any other group combined," Lyles said. "So I looked at that, and looked at the level of competition that I would be competing and recruiting against, and that was the most intriguing part.  Going against people I idolized, and saying to myself 'I'm going to beat you.'"

He went on to add that he cannot wait to go up against his alma mater.  While he supports what is going on at Tennessee, and supports the changes that are happening there, he said, "there's always something in the back of my mind that wants to show that I learned something at the University of Tennessee, and that I'm putting those things into action where I am and they are part of my success.  I want my kids to be better than what I was and experience greater success than what the teams I was on experienced.  I want them to have a legacy greater than the one I was able to be a part of at Tennessee."

For Lyles, the biggest thrill he gets while coaching comes from being able to see one of his athletes line up in a National Championship event, and seeing the look of intensity on their face and knowing that they're in the zone.  When he sees that, he knows he's prepared them as much as possible, and "it's exciting to sit back and watch them perform."

After almost a decade of coaching, Lyles said the biggest challenge of the job is not always the coaching itself, but instead having to fill whatever role is needed in the lives of his athletes.

"Sometimes I have to be a pastor, a brother, an uncle or a father to some, a friend at times.  But, at the same time, being an authoritarian and a disciplinarian; that side takes more precedence than coaching," Lyles said. "One of my greatest memories was when, years [after coaching his daughter], a father came to me and said 'you did something for my daughter that I couldn't do, I couldn't raise her.'  That was greater than any accomplishment I have had in my career."