By Arielle Maxner

 

Former assistant track coach Dot Jones plays Coach Shannon Beiste on the award-winning Fox television show “Glee,” created by Ian Brennan, Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy. Jones coached in the mid 90s for one season.

Coach Beiste is the most recent addition to the faculty at McKinley High. Bullied by other faculty members, Beiste befriends the Glee director Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison). In a recent episode, “Never Been Kissed,” Beiste admits she has never been kissed, leading Schuester to give her a kiss.

Jones started playing Beiste in the second season of “Glee,” getting the role through a chance meeting with co-executive producer Brad Falchuk at Whole Foods. Two months later they called her agent and “asked my availability starting the middle of July because they were creating a character for me,” she said. Before joining the show, she knew nothing about her character.

Jones has also guest-starred on a number of other television programs, including “Desperate Housewives,” “Prison Break,” and “Nip/Tuck,” but portraying Coach Beiste is her biggest role to date. She is the 15-time World and six-time National arm-wrestling champion.