Track & Field and Soccer Complex
620 Meadow Ln. Drive, Hattiesburg, MS, 39401
For the past 17 years the Marshall Bell Track at the Southern Miss Track and Field and Soccer Complex has been the home of the Golden Eagle track and field program.
The first year proved to be a learning experience for all, and, after hosting only two regular-season meets, Southern Miss held the Conference USA Outdoor Championships in May 1997. Overall, Southern Miss has hosted a total of 48 events in the past 12 years, including the High School South-State Championships.
The track received a major upgrade in 2013 when the track was replaced with a new Benyon surface while upgrading the long jump runways and pits and high jump areas.
The complex, which consists of a track, soccer field, press box, and storage facilities, has bleacher seating for approximately 850 and is regarded as one of the top facilities in the state. The complex is also equipped with a state-of-the-art Daktronics scoreboard. The track is rightfully named after former Head Coach Marshall Bell, who was with the program for 18 years and whose teams won the Metro Conference Championship twice in the men's division and once in the women's division.
Groundbreaking on the facility began took place in the spring of 1995 and the track neared completion in the fall of 1996. Improvements on the track and soccer field are continuously being made in order to help it become one of the top facilities in the conference.
Southern Miss Soccer Complex The Southern Miss Soccer Complex is the home of the Golden Eagle soccer team, as well as, the track and field program.
Groundbreaking on the facility began in the spring of 1995 and the track neared completion in the fall of 1996. Improvements on the track and soccer field are continuously being made in order to help it become one of the top facilities in the conference.
The complex, which consists of a track, soccer field, press box and storage facilities, has bleacher seating for approximately 850 and is regarded as one of the top facilities in the state. The complex is also equipped with a state-of-the-art Daktronics scoreboard. In 2011, the addition of air conditioned locker rooms for the Golden Eagles highlighted additional amenities.
The Golden Eagle soccer team began playing at the Southern Miss Soccer Complex in 1997, when the sport was created as a varsity sport. Southern Miss hosted McNeese State in its first home game on Sept. 5, 1997, winning, 4-0.
About Marshall Bell
Marshall Bell was the head track and field coach for the Golden Eagles from 1979-1997. There had been a track and field program at Southern Miss prior to the program being restarted in the late 1970s, and it was a program that was extremely successful but relied almost entirely on athletes from football and basketball to make up its squad. When the program was dismantled in the late 1950s, it would take someone special to revive it and to help it achieve new heights.
Marshall Bell is the founder of the modern day track and field program at the University of Southern Mississippi and during his eighteen year tenure in charge of the program elevated the Golden Eagle program to heights never dreamed of.
Marshall Bell graduated from Mississippi Valley State University in 1964 and earned his Masters degree from Southern Miss in 1970. At Valley State he was a four-year lettermen in track and field and a three-year letterman in football. Following his graduation he coached for four seasons at Hawkins High School in Forest, Mississippi and was an assistant football coach and head track coach at meridian High School form 1968 to 1973. At one point during his Meridian tenure, his Wildcat squad owned all the state records in the sprints and relays. Meridian High won the 1970 state championship under Bell’s guidance and was runner-up four other times. He eventually was hired to teach as an assistant professor at Southern Miss in the newly created Department of Coaching and Sports Administration.
Coach Bell was hired by then athletic director Roland Dale to resurrect the Golden Eagle track and field program that had been dropped in the late 1950s. Bell oversaw six of the school’s 15 varsity NCAA sports at the time, men’s and women’s outdoor track, men’s and women’s indoor track and men’s and women’s cross country.
The track and field program came a long way under Bell. When he restarted the program in 1977, they started with a $25,000 budget and recruited solely distance runners and began with only five or six runners on scholarship.
Under Bell’s leadership the program experienced more ups than downs. His men’s squad won back-to-back Metro Conference Championships and the women won a Metro Conference Championship as well. The school produced track and field All-Americans and had athletes that advanced to the NCAA championships and competed in the United States Olympic trials. But more important his athletes were true scholar-athletes and graduated and became productive and respected members of their communities.
While Bell watched his programs flourish and grow during his 18-year career at Southern Miss, the crowning achievement of that career was realized in the spring of 1997 when the Southern Miss Track and Field Complex opened and Bell’s Golden Eagles hosted the first two outdoor meets in modern day school history. The school also hosted the second ever Conference USA Track and Field Championships in the spring of 1997.
Like a proud father, Bell said on that day, “I don’t think I have ever had a more satisfying day in my professional career than the day we hosted our first meet in the new facility.” That day had been the culmination of a lot of planning and hard work as well as a long time dream Bell had for the program. It took longer than he would have liked to achieve many of the dreams he had for the track and field program at Southern Miss, but his philosophy was always "to dwell on the positives."
Bell was inducted into the M-Club Alumni Association Sports Hall of Fame in 2004 for his achievements as a coach as well as his leadership in building up the track and field program, and his role as a teacher and educator for thousands of men and women, athletes and non-athletes, to come through Southern Miss.