School is out and track and field, along with the other spring sports, is done. But here are a couple of items before we break for the summer.
Southwest DeKalb's Cobb inducted into GACA HOF
Legendary high school and college track and field coach Napoleon Cobb was inducted into the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame, during a ceremony at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center in Dalton last week. Cobb went in with an impressive group of coaches -- Harvey Cochran (baseball), Larry Campbell (football), Odis Spencer (football), Jane Williamson (basketball) and Dexter Wood (football).
A profile of Cobb that was published on MyAJC is pasted at the bottom of this post.
Athletes of the Year coming Sunday
Make sure to pick up Sunday's paper to read profiles of the 2014-2015 Athletes of the Year, including the Boys and Girls Track and Field Athletes of the Year. Last year's winners -- Christian Coleman (Our Lady of Mercy, Tennessee) and Tiffany Flynn (Miller Grove, Mississippi) are off to good starts on the next level. Coleman was the SEC Indoor and Outdoor Freshman Runner of the Year and was selected as Tennessee's Freshman Athlete of the Year. Flynn posted the third best indoor triple jump and the fourth best outdoor triple jump in school history this season.
Commentary: Time for the GHSA to move the girls' championship meet out of Albany
With apologies to the good people of Albany, it's time for the Georgia High School Association to find another venue for the girls state championships. Holding the event there does a disservice to the athletes, coaches and families who make the trek to Hugh Mills Stadium each May.
The venue is not accommodating for an event of this size. The walkways are tiny and restrictive, forcing a never-ending bottleneck at the cramped concession stand. The restrooms are similarly small, which leads to lines of patrons forced to wait their turn. The stadium's wiring is outdated, as illustrated by the fact that this year electricity had to be cut to the press box/coaches' suite so that the timing equipment on the track would have adequate power.
This has been an issue for years. GHSA director of media relations Steve Figueroa said the organization has not received any formal complaints from coaches. However, a number of coaches openly complained to me this year. None wanted to be quoted, but here is a statement from one who said her 400-meter relay team missed valuable warm up time due to a breakdown in communication between the event staff and the Albany Police, which provide security: "The GHSA needs to move our meet to another location. If this were football or basketball, or a boys sport, they would move us, but they don't care because it's girls track."
According to the coach, event staffers told the relay team they could not warm up on the track because the meet was about to start in the next 20 minutes. However, when the team attempted to warm up outside of the stadium, they were told by an Albany Police officer that they would not be allowed re-enter the stadium, according to the coach. (While I cannot confirm this specific incident, I did observe officers telling patrons "no in-and-outs.")
The GHSA would most likely want to keep the girls' meet in south Georgia, in order to accommodate those schools that make the long ride from below the gnat line to Jefferson for the boys' meet. However, another venue -- such as Baldwin County High School -- would be a better choice.
Have a great, and safe, summer! We'll see you the first week of August for the start of football season.
By S. Thomas Coleman
For the AJC
By the time he was a junior at South Carolina, Terrence Trammell had already accomplished just about everything a college track athlete could at that level, so he decided to pursue a professional career and make a run at the 2000 United States Olympic team.
But he didn’t turn to his college coach to be his trainer. He didn’t seek out the best pro coaches in the field. Instead, he looked to his roots, to the man who had set his foundation in the sport as a ninth grader at Southwest DeKalb: his high school coach Napolean Cobb.
The result was a silver medal in the 110-meter hurdles event at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, the first of two Olympic silver medals Trammell would win during his career as one of the most decorated track and field athletes in U.S. history. He said Cobb was a major influence and motivator.
“He is definitely one of the top coaches I have come in contact with on any level,” said Trammell, 36, who retired a few years ago and now runs Trammell Athletics, a speed and agility training company. “Had he decided to move to the level of coaching elite athletes, he would have had success there, too.”
Cobb is one of six legendary high school coaches – including Harvey Cochran (baseball), Larry Campbell (football), Odis Spencer (football), Jane Williamson (basketball) and Dexter Wood (football) – that will be inducted into the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association (GACA) Hall of Fame, Saturday at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center in Dalton.
“It’s definitely a great, great honor,” said Cobb, 73, who just retired from a second stint as the head coach at Southwest DeKalb by winning the school’s ninth state team title, capping a 50-year career that spanned six decades. “But it was never a goal to reach the Hall of Fame. We just wanted to do the best job we could with the kids we had. This honor means I guess we did a pretty good job.”
Born and raised in Atlanta, Cobb graduated from then-Turner High School, where he was a standout performer in football and track and field. It was also the place where he was exposed to his first coaching mentor, Judo Brown. He would go on to be influenced by Ed Temple, his college coach at Tennessee State, who led the program during the famed “Tigerbelle” era, which featured Olympic legend Wilma Rudolph, along with men’s team standout Ralph Boston, a three-time Olympian.
After graduating from TSU in 1965, Cobb spent two years coaching football and track in Chicago before moving on to Berkeley High in Berkeley, Calif., where he had the opportunity to learn from Bud Winters who coached more than 100 All-Americans and 27 Olympians at San Jose State, known in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as “Speed City.”
In 1972, Cobb returned to Georgia as the football and track coach at now-defunct Gordon High in DeKalb County, where he led the program to three state titles in 1975, 1976 and 1978. Then it was on to Morehouse College, where Cobb resurrected that program, leading the Maroon Tigers to three consecutive Southern Interscholastic Athletic Conference championships in his final three years there – 1987, 1988 and 1989.
Cobb returned to the high school ranks in 1989, when he took over at Southwest DeKalb. Under his leadership, the Panthers dominated the 1990’s, winning six state titles in 10 seasons including a mythical national championship in 1996 with a team that featured future Olympians Trammell and Angelo Taylor (400-meter hurdles). After another brief stint at Morehouse, Cobb returned to Southwest DeKalb to restore that program to championship level this season.
“It’s about the fundamentals and the scientific aspect of the sport,” Cobb said, referencing lessons he learned from Brown, Temple and Winters. “That’s how you build and maintain a program that will last for years and years.”
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