Quick, name the head track and field coach at Georgia.
If you fall in the category of most college sports fans, your knowledge of their school’s athletic program doesn’t go much deeper than football and basketball. So you probably whiffed on that bit of trivia. But while Wayne Norton may not be a household name in the Bulldog Nation, he’s somewhat of an institution at Georgia.
Only Jack Bauerle (swimming and diving), Manuel Diaz (men’s tennis), Andy Landers (women’s basketball) and Jeff Wallace (women’s tennis) have been at UGA longer. Norton, 55, preceded Mark Richt — dean of SEC football coaches — by one year, two if one takes into account his head-coach-in-waiting distinction in 1999. And including his time as an assistant coach before that, he has been at Georgia for 25 years this season.
But when it comes to Norton’s coaching style and persona, he’s not loud or flashy. He’s just a guy who quietly gets the job done and lets his assistant coaches coach.
And that’s the reason Norton has been around a quarter-century and Georgia track has been pretty good under his watch.
His women’s team was ranked as high as No. 1 during the ongoing indoor season. Currently No. 4, the Lady Bulldogs enter this week’s NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., considered one of the few teams with a realistic chance at a national championship. The men’s team enters the competition at No. 6.
This comes less than a year after the teams posted the best combined finish in school history at the 2014 outdoor championships at fifth (women) and sixth (men).
Overseeing this burgeoning empire is a quiet-spoken, unassuming man who spends nearly as much time in his fourth-floor Stegeman Coliseum office managing spreadsheets as he does on UGA’s Spec Towns track.
“What I’ve tried to do mainly is just be myself with my athletes and staff,” Norton said. “A lot of head coaches are yelling and screaming and demanding, but that was never my personality. So I just kind of had to be myself and just worked really hard to build a staff and let them do what they do.”
It’s imperfect, but Norton has utilized a formula for success that he learned working under his predecessor at UGA, John Mitchell. His emphasis in recruiting and roster-building is on the field events.
That was evidenced last year as his athletes won a school-record five NCAA titles. Freshmen Leontia Kallenou and Kendell Williams swept indoor and outdoor championships in the high jump and pentathlon/heptathlon. The Bulldogs also got a men’s national title from sophomore decathlete Maicel Uibo.
And many are back from that record-setting squad. Of the 22 who traveled to NCAA outdoors last year, only three were seniors. Thirteen were freshmen or sophomores (though one underclassmen, sprinter Shaunae Miller, turned pro).
So expectations were high entering this season, and they remain high entering Friday’s competition at the University of Arkansas. The women finished third in the national indoors last year and aim to improve on that.
“It’s a good feeling,” said Quintunya Chapman, a heptathlete and a team leader. “(Norton has) given us so much confidence about competing this year, how good we can be and how much potential we have. These indoor nationals, it’s going to be interesting to see. I’m just excited to see how we perform. We’re going to be interesting to watch.”
Said Norton: “We’ve got people who have been there before. Track is not that tricky. If you’ve got people who are ranked high, you’ve got a chance. We fully expect to be in the top 10, and then the goal is to see if we can’t beat the rankings. We’ve been consistent. That’s the thing that makes us feel best.”
If last year’s experience is any indication (the women finished third), Georgia may be a blue-chip sprinter or two away from breaking down the door for its first national championship in track. Typically the Bulldogs shoot out ahead of the pack in the field events, then have to sit back idly as they watch other schools literally run them down in sprints and distance races.
But the Bulldogs’ muscle in jumps, throws and multi-events is no accident. That’s the way Norton has built them.
Norton has five full-time assistants, who he offers absolute autonomy in their respective disciplines. Longtime assistant Don Babbit generally is considered the best throws coach in the country and has an international reputation. Same for Petros Kyprianou, a native of Cyprus whose work with jumpers and “multis.”
They have helped attract the best in the world to Athens. The athletes accompanying UGA to nationals represent seven countries.
“I give people long leashes,” said Norton, who led the Lady Bulldogs to SEC indoor and outdoor championships in 2006. “I’m the kind of person who sits back and as long as we’re making progress and going in the right direction, I’m OK. I have a lot of patience. As long as we’re moving forward, we’re good.”
As for his own timeline, this former Howard University sprinter, a New Jersey native, doesn’t expect to do this forever. Including his time as a grad assistant at Indiana and assistant at Northern Arizona, Norton has been in the game for 34 years. A devout Christian and part-time foster parent, this father of four has plans beyond the competitive grind.
“I won’t be one of those 68-year-old guys still here,” said Norton, a member of Bethesda Apostolic Church in Athens. “I’m going to be doing some kind of ministry work. That’s where I will be. Now I don’t know if that will be two years, four years, six years, but that’s really where I’ll be.”
