A third-generation Bison, former track & field and cross country coach Ford Mastin was an 11-time NAIA National Coach of the Year with 10 NAIA national championships since starting with the Bison in the 1996-97 seasons. Following the 2023 spring season, Mastin’s decorated 27-year Bison head coaching career came to a close, as Mastin retired and moved into an assistant role with the program.
Highlight years have included 2007 when the women won the NAIA Indoor National Championship and the men won the Outdoor National Championship, and 2013 when both men and women’s teams captured Indoor National Championships. Along with the team championships came National Coach of the Year awards to bring Mastin’s total to 11 - one each in 1998, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015, and two in 2007 & 2013.
On the national level, the Bison women have won seven team national championships and have finished as runners-up five times. During an incredible stretch in the 2000s, Mastin’s women’s 4x400 meter relay teams won 16 of a possible 19 relay national championships, including an incredible 11 titles in a row (outdoor 2007-outdoor 2012). The relay teams’ first miss since 2007 was a runner-up finish indoors as the Bison captured the team national championship, one of two team national championships. The Bison finished as runners-up four times, have 13 third-place finishes and have nine national fourth-place finishes. Mastin’s Bison teams have recorded nine national records and earned 106 national titles in relay and individual events. His teams won eight NCCAA National Championships.
In the Sooner Athletic Conference, the Bison women dominated, winning 16 consecutive conference championships. The women’s cross country team won 13 out of 18 SAC titles. The men’s track team won 14 out of 16 conference championships, including eight in a row, while the men’s cross country teams won 10 out of 18.
Mastin’s teams have produced more than 1100 All-America awards at multiple levels and associations. He has garnered countless conference and regional Coach of the Year honors and was inducted in to the Oklahoma Track Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2008, the NAIA Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Drake Relays Hall of Fame in 2019. He won the SAC Coach of Character Award in 2012-13 and the NAIA Coach of Character Award in 2014. He was named OBU’s Most Promising Teacher in 2001 and received the OBU Meritorious Award in 2017.
Before coming to Bison Hill, Mastin spent 14 years (1982-1996) at Prague High School in Oklahoma. There, he began to master his craft as a track coach and ended up coaching 13 All-State award winners while being named Oklahoma Track Coach of the Year and USA Track and Field representative for Olympic development in 1994.
From Stillwater, Mastin was a four-year track letterman at OBU. He was captain of the track team in 1976-77. He and his wife, Terri, have three grown children who were all OBU graduates: Lindsey, Trevor and Kaeley.
