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Doug Speck grew up in southern California, attending Eagle Rock high, Pasadena City College and Cal Poly Pomona before earning a Masters degree from Azusa Pacific. He began teaching at Hueneme High in Oxnard in the early 70s before moving on to Arcadia High school in the mid-seventies where he taught history and was the a track and cross country coach. In addition to coaching, where his teams qualified for Southern Section finals and the State track meets, he assisted in the development of the Arcadia Invitational track meet. Under his guidance, along with Meet Director Doug Smith, he created a national level meet, that has been the best in-season invitational in the nation for the last 35 years.

 In 1984 Doug served as a volunteer at the 1984 Olympic Games, where he assisted with the Track and Field events at the Coliseum. From 1987-1999, he was USATF Consultant to Juniors (under 20). Each of the next twelve years he mailed thousands of letters to high school athletes and coaches informing them of the U.S. National Junior championships and the prospects of competing on the international level. Prior to that time most high school athletes were unaware of these opportunities.

 All along the way Doug was constantly promoting the sport, first as a writer for California Track and Field news and as the Girls national high school indoor editor for Track and Field News. After attending a few high level invitationals he how poorly the were announced. If you were really lucky the entrants were announced and results were read. This caused him to begin announcing meets. He researching leading athletes performances, put that information into his introductions as well as giving a running account of each event. In addition, he informed the runners and the fans of the possibility of state and national records and encouraged the spectators to help the runners along. The word soon spread and he became known as the best high school announcer in the nation and one of the best announcers period. Over the years, Doug announced more than 50 national indoor and outdoor meets as well as national cross country championships.

 Doug turned to the Internet in the mid 90s as a means of furthering the promotion of high school track and cross country. After attending classes, he developed one of the very first high school track websites in the nation. At about the same time, John Dye created DyeStat, the first national high school website. Shortly thereafter Doug and Rich Gonzalez founded DyeStatCal. They became two of the most visited websites in the nation. Doug then began using video for personal interviews of athletes and coaches and a visual record of races (with audio) that could be viewed by the general public.

 Over the next 15 he continued to refined all of his skills.

 In 2010, in recognition of his efforts over the last 40 years, the NSAF named the Doug the first recipient of the Doug Speck Award for Excellence and Innovation.

 Doug passed in the Spring of 2010 with Leslie Paoletti at his side.