Reception honoring track coaching great Jacket set for Saturday in Richmond
Published 3:46 pm Thursday, January 18, 2018
- Barbara Jacket
The News staff report
A reception honoring former Prairie View A&M and U.S. Olympic track and field coach Barbara Jacket will be held from 2-4 p.m. Saturday at Clayton Oaks Living, 21175 Southwest Freeway in Richmond.
The Port Arthur native was inducted into the Texas Track & Field Coaches Association Hall of Fame in Addison on Jan. 5. Regarded as one of the greatest women’s track coaches in U.S. history, Jacket coached at Prairie View from 1965-91, with her teams winning eight NAIA outdoor and two indoor championships and earning more national titles in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women and the U.S. Track and Field Federation. Jacket’s teams also won eight Southwestern Athletic Conference cross country titles, nine SWAC indoor and and five SWAC outdoor titles. Jacket was named SWAC coach of the year on 23 occasions and NAIA coach of the year five times.
Jacket tutored 57 All-Americans and became the only woman athletic director in the conference at Prairie View in 1990. She retired from the university in 1991 to devote more time to preparation for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona as the U.S. women’s track coach.
Among her athletes in Barcelona were Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Gwen Torrance, Gail Devers and Evelyn Ashford. Team USA won four gold medals, three silver and three bronze, at the time more than any team since 1956, when her college coach, Dr. Nell Jackson, led the team. The 4×100-meter relay team also set a record.
Jacket was born in Port Arthur, where she and her two siblings were raised by their mother, who died when Jacket was just out of college. She graduated from Lincoln High in 1954 and Tuskegee Institute in 1958.
She is a member of the NAIA, Texas Women’s and Tuskegee Athetic halls of fame and was honored as a Port Arthur Chamber of Commerce “Distinguished Citizen.” The Texas A&M Board of Regents in the fall of 1992 voted a proclamation for meritorious service in her honor.
Other awards for Jacket include the Joe Robercher Award, the President’s TAC award and two Yellow Rose of Texas awards.
About I.C. Murrell
I.C. Murrell was promoted to editor of The News, effective Oct. 14, 2019. He previously served as sports editor since August 2015 and has won or shared eight first-place awards from state newspaper associations and corporations. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, grew up mostly in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and graduated from the University of Arkansas at Monticello.
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