With 13 state championships under his leadership, Greg Adkins, Glacier High School speech and debate head coach, will be inducted Friday into the Montana High School Association/Montana Forensic Educators Association Coaches Hall of Fame.

The titles — nine at Flathead High and four at Glacier — surpass Bozeman’s legendary coach Anne Sullivan, who attained 11 state titles and after whom the association’s AA Coach of the Year award is named.

Adkins’ forensics career began when he was a student at Flathead High School when sports didn’t pan out.

“I’d always done athletics. I was a wannabe athlete,” Adkins said. “My athletic career ended and I got cut from teams. Speech and debate kind of filled that hole because I loved the competition of it.”

Adkins began competing in Serious Interpretation and was in good hands with head coach David Hashley, who was inducted into the hall of fame in 1998.

“We won two state championships junior and senior year I was on the team,” Adkins said, although neither involved an individual state title. “I got second both years at state to my teammate — which is still awesome.”

By the time he graduated in 1986, Adkins knew coaching speech and debate would be in his future.

“I just got the bug,” Adkins said.

In college, he had mentors who didn’t necessarily have ties to forensics but were “really instrumental in pushing me to be a leader,” Adkins said.

After college, Adkins returned to student-teach in Kalispell and helped out with the Flathead High School speech and debate team for a couple of seasons.

“I walked in on their very first practice and I said, ‘You need help this year,’” Adkins said.

From 1992 to 1994, he served as an assistant coach at Flathead before moving into the role of head coach in 1994. His Flathead teams went on to win nine Class AA state titles in a 10-year span.

When Glacier opened in 2007, Adkins ventured to the new school, taking on the risks of building a new speech and debate program.

“That was tough because we [Flathead] had won nine state championships,” Adkins said. “I say now as I said then, I really believe that Flathead, they already had the tradition. Sue Brown was still there. Dave Hashley was still there. They had people that were going to take care of it. I knew some assistant coaches were staying. So I just wanted to make sure that the new school would have people that would be invested in it as well.”

When it comes to competition, Adkins is driven.

Glacier placed seventh at state in 2008, rocketed to third place in 2009, second in 2010 and first in 2011. Glacier would successfully defend its state championship the next three years.

“I am highly competitive, probably more so when I started,” he said. “You get humbled by this activity pretty quickly.”

Those humbling moments included 2015, when Glacier placed third with Flathead winning the state title, and again this year when his team was third again despite winning every tournament but one during the regular season.

“You have to keep it all in perspective,” Adkins said. “Yeah, we had a fantastic year. Yeah, we are driven. We had goals. You always look on the bus after a tournament and it wasn’t like our kids didn’t try hard — they gave everything they had. You just get some bad breaks — some things not go your way, which we knew could happen all year. I mean Bozeman and Flathead are remarkable teams.”

Adkins, who was named AA Coach of the Year in 1995 and 1997, will be inducted into the hall of fame Friday at the Montana Forensic Educators Association annual meeting in Bozeman.

“I am really honored,” Adkins said about his pending induction. “I also know that it’s honoring all those teams and the coaches who have coached with me.”

He also noted that the success of speech in Kalispell is due to support from the town and the larger Flathead Valley community.

“We’re pretty lucky speech and debate is important in this community. It’s important in Columbia Falls, it’s important in Whitefish — that didn’t just happen,” Adkins said. “Obviously we have a lot of alumni that were part of these programs that are now parents in the community or grandparents in the community. We have amazing administrators and amazing coaches.”

Despite his induction into the hall of fame, retirement is not on the horizon for Adkins.

Currently he coaches his son, Brock, a junior, and hopes to eventually coach another son, Mac, who is in fifth grade. His wife, Lori, is a fourth-grade teacher at Edgerton School.

“So I probably will not retire just yet.”

Hilary Matheson is a reporter for The Daily Inter Lake. She may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.