Eric Hays Interview, November 21, 2024

Eric Hays, a former University of Montana Basketball player and current Hellgate High School basketball coach, reflects back on growing up immersed in the world of sports. Beginning his career in Junction City, Oregon and finding himself in Missoula, Montana, Hays outlines his individual sports history that involved his multiple moves from college to college to play basketball and his eventual coaching career from the collegiate level to the high school level. Hays discusses the similarities between being a coach versus being a teacher of mathematics and how he has been able to mold the future generation of athletes and youths in his community. Lastly, he discusses stepping into an assistant coaching job after forty years as the Hellgate head coach and gives some parting advice to the future youth and future athletes within the sports community. Interviewer Ilena Levitt was an undergraduate student participating in the Griz Nation Oral History Project as part of the Griz130 History Initiative.