SMU Hall Of Fame: Windy Dean Made History One Throw At A Time

Finding Windy Dean during her track and field career at SMU was easy — just look at the top of the podium. Finding her to tell her she was being inducted into the SMU Hall of Fame was a different story.

She kept getting calls from unknown numbers and wasn't about to answer them. It took another former SMU thrower to convince her to answer and make contact with the athletic department.

"It's kind of funny because apparently I was quite elusive and I did not realize it," Dean said. "This number, this random number, kept calling me, and I'm like, I don't know this number. Ignore, delete, ignore, delete, and this went on for, I guess, at least two weeks. Finally, Xavier Tison calls me, and he's like, 'Just answer the phone.'"

Tison made sure not to spoil the surprise.

"I was driving, and just this sudden wave of emotions hit me, and I had to pull over," Dean said. "It was just crazy. This was not on my radar ever. I don't even think I knew what the Hall of Fame was when I was throwing there. So two years ago, going to Dave Wollman's Hall of Fame (induction in 2024) and seeing what this was about, it was absolutely amazing. Now being able to be a part of it, or the center of it, is just incredible."

There's another universe where Dean played volleyball in college instead. When she came to Texas for some college visits with her aunt, she had VHS tapes of her volleyball highlights.

They had visited TCU, but it didn't feel like the right fit. SMU was different. Dean said she would have signed her Letter of Intent on the spot.

"We were standing at the corner by Boaz Hall and Dave was talking to us. I was looking around, and it was just the way the sun was coming through the trees and the view of the campus, and it was so simplistic," Dean said. "The Boulevard and Dallas Hall at the very end, the quad in the middle, and it just felt like home. It absolutely felt like home."

At her new home, Dean was a three-time national champion in javelin and earned All-America honors seven times — all four years in javelin and three in the hammer throw. The only reason she wasn't an eight-time All-American was because the women's hammer throw wasn't sanctioned by the NCAA until her sophomore year.

Dean was coming off a third-place finish in the javelin as a freshman in 1995, when the hammer was introduced. She was also throwing the discus and shot put, but adding the hammer meant she could drop the shot put.

It was win-win.

"You're at the bottom. How do you go wrong, right?" Dean said of competing in the hammer throw the first year. "There's no expectations. There's no distances. So you're just going all out for as far as you can go."

In 1996, Dean won the first of three straight NCAA titles and was joined at the top of the podium by fellow thrower Teri Steer (SMU HOF '19) in the shot put.

Dean and Steer would be regulars on the podium together over the years. Dean also finished fifth, third and third in the hammer throw over three seasons.

"When you think about athletes like Teri Steer, she's another great one of my teammates. We threw everything," Dean said. "You didn't show up and just throw. You weren't just a one-event person. You threw everything. I had at least three things I threw. We were kind of like the triathletes of the throwing section, and Dave usually capped us at three."

The success extended beyond the throwing group. In 1998, Dean's senior year, she was one of eight SMU athletes to compete at the NCAA Championships.

The Mustangs placed third as a team in 1996 and 1998, fourth in 1997 and sixth in 1995.

"It was kind of like your own posse," Dean said. "We would go to some huge meets. But when SMU showed up, I mean, people took notice. Just the sheer size and the absolute authority and confidence that exuded off the throwing team. They knew when we rolled in, and it was really kind of fun."

Winning was the expectation, but that expectation didn't come from pressure from her teammates, coaches or even herself.

If she was going to school because of track, she was going to go out and win.

"Yay! I got first. Well, I should get first because it's paying for my schooling, right?" Dean said. "My sports were my job, the schooling was the reward, and that's just how I was raised. … For me, I would get stressed out at school, and then I would go to my job and hit the ring, and that's where I would just be at peace and be at home."

Dean didn't think about winning. She just did it — until an injury made her question what she was capable of.

"I didn't feel the pressure of that until my junior year when I tore up my shoulder," Dean said. "I would show up, and I knew that day, no matter what, I was taking home a championship. Whether it was hammer or javelin, I was taking at least one home. And my junior year in Indianapolis, it was the NCAA meet that year, and it was early on in the meet, but I ended up tearing up my shoulder, and it made my senior year really hard."

That changed everything for Dean. She had built her career on letting her work speak for itself, but now doubt crept in. She began to wonder whether the injury or pain would make each throw her last.

"It just changed everything for me. It was very scary," Dean said. "My senior year was very scary for me when it came to the javelin, and it was hard. It honestly was. Now they have sports psychology. That was in its, at best, infancy at that point. They didn't have that, so you just had to suck it up and figure it out."

That's where Coach Wollman stepped in.

"You'd have a bad throw every once in a while, but you have to be able to laugh that off, and you have to be able to shift gears," Dean said. "I was really grateful for Dave. Dave had a way of reading me. Dave could see if I was starting to get up in my head, and he'd do corny little things to get me out of my head and just let the muscle memory kick in."

Sometimes the muscle memory was a little too good, though. When the team got brand-new javelins, Dean took a couple of throws with them straight out of the box.

The first landed and was propped up by an assistant coach walking by. The second one went to the exact same spot.

"I take another warm-up throw, and I literally spear the first one," Dean said. "It's a one-in-a-million shot, like impossible, right? And I literally look at Dave, and I see Dave go white as a sheet. I think he ended practice right then. He's like, 'We're done today.'"

But it was that precision, consistency and drive that made Dean the only back-to-back-to-back NCAA national champion in the javelin and one of only two women to win the title three times.

"I was so naive, dumb. I had no idea," Dean said. "I remember when I got my first All-American certificate, and I think Dave gave it to me, and I'm just like, 'OK.' I had no idea what it was. So, throughout, I think that's what allowed me to be successful — I had no idea what I was accomplishing as I went."

Dean may not have understood the significance of that first All-American certificate, but decades later, her accomplishments have earned her a place in the SMU Hall of Fame.

The inductees will be recognized at the annual Hall of Fame Banquet and Induction Ceremony presented by Westdale Asset Management on Friday, October 16 in Armstrong Fieldhouse on the SMU Campus. For additional information or for tickets to the SMU Athletics Hall of Fame Banquet, click here.

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