Staff Photo by Jake Olson: Former Fairmont boys basketball head coach and 2002 Fairmont Hall of Fame inductee Ron Hested accepts the 2025 Cardinal Legacy Award on Friday night before the Cardinals' contest against Jackson County Central. Hested had a career record of 354-205 during his 24 year tenure in Fairmont.

FAIRMONT – The Fairmont High School basketball program honored former head coach Ron Hested with the first-ever Cardinal Legacy Award before Friday night’s boys contest against Jackson County Central.

Current head coach Jared Thompson created the award to recognize former players, coaches, or staff members who have positively impacted the basketball program while paving the way for future generations of athletes.

“One of our core values is being connected,” Thompson said. “I’ve been around Fairmont basketball my whole life. … For these young guys, you need somebody there to let them know what the story of Fairmont basketball was. It’s a way to make sure the people who have done a lot are recognized.”

According to Thompson, nobody has embodied the heart and soul of Fairmont basketball better than Hested.

“He had the longest tenure and won the most games out of any coach in our program; the numbers speak for themselves,” Thompson said. “He’s a guy whose roots weren’t in Fairmont, and he decided this was a place to be and raise his family.”

Hested is a member of the 1999 Minnesota Basketball Coaches Association (MBCA) Hall of Honor, and a class of 2002 Fairmont High School Athletic Hall of Fame inductee for his illustrious coaching career for multiple programs.

After brief stints at Buffalo Lake, Waukon and Kenyon, Heated settled down at Fairmont in 1972 to begin his decorated 24-year tenure at the helm of the Cardinals program. He compiled an all-time coaching record of 506-260, winning at a clip of 66%. With Fairmont, Hested posted a 354-205 record while earning 11 conference championships.

“Here’s what I knew was going to happen no matter what team he was coaching; they were going to play aggressive, they were going to be physical and they were going to play smart,” Former Blue Earth Area boys basketball head coach Gary Holmseth said.

Outside of a fundamentally sound style of play, Hested’s roster typically focused on strong defensive effort that led to taking advantage of transition opportunities whenever they presented.

“We liked to play defense, we liked to rebound and we liked an up-tempo game,” Hested said. “A lot of times we would apply full-court pressure and just speed the game up as much as we could.”

The highlight of Hested’s time with the Cardinals came in the 1989-1990 winter season. Fairmont’s 20-7 record was capped by a third-place finish in that year’s state tournament, the program’s highest finish ever at that stage.

“Coach Hested had them playing fast, hard and physical. It ignited my passion for basketball,” Thompson said. “The Cardinals were kind of in our heyday right then, and that team was just the perfect mixture. They played at a pace that teams weren’t doing, as we did, we were scoring in the 80s, 90s or 100s in a game.”