Tracking Carla Coffey: It all began with Wilma Rudolph

Carla Coffey has coached track and field at Smith College for 21 years.

NORTHAMPTON – For coach Carla Coffey of Smith College, her love of track began on a television set.

"My father didn't want television, so if I wanted to watch something, I had to go up the street to a friend's house," she said, harking back to childhood years in Somerset, Kentucky.

On one unforgettable day in the summer of 1960, she went "up the street" to watch the Olympic Games, being broadcast from Rome. She sat transfixed as she saw Wilma Rudolph of the Tennessee State Tigerbelles win the 200-meter dash – one of the three gold medals she reaped for Team USA.

Italian newspapers nicknamed Rudolph "La Gazella Negra" (the Black Gazelle) after she also won the 100-meter dash, and anchored a gold medal-winning relay team.

On that day, Carla was only 11 years old, but she suddenly knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to be Wilma Rudolph.

Well, Coffey never made it to the Olympics, but she did have her shot at the Olympic Trials in 1972. Beyond all that, having Rudolph as a role model inspired her to excel in three sports in college, and follow with an exemplary coaching career that is still going strong. Along the way, she became the first woman athlete enshrined in the Murray State University Athletic Hall of Fame. She's also a Hall of Famer at her high school and in the Kentucky Track and Cross Country Coaches Association.

Internationally, she has served five times as manager and coach of USA Track and Field junior teams. In 1995, she managed Team USA for the world indoor championships in Barcelona. Within the NCAA, she has served on its track and field rules committee.

This marks her 42nd year as a head coach, and her 21st at Smith.

When she got to Somerset High School, she found that tennis was the only sport offered for girls.

"In my senior year, we finally got a girls track team," she recalled. "I went around and recruited who I thought were some of the best girl athletes in the school prior to talking to my phys-ed teacher about it. She became our sponsor.

"Our school's first girls track team competed that spring. I read books by Dr. Nell Jackson (a pioneer of women's track) and I watched the boys track training methods. I learned to hurdle from one of the boys. That year, we won the regional championship. I qualified for the state meet in the 70-yard hurdles and finished third."

Going into high school, Coffey had never played organized basketball, but she did play a lot of "unorganized" games with her four older brothers. With that background, she made the high school varsity. She also played volleyball.

Then it was on to Murray State, where she co-captained the volleyball, basketball and track teams as a senior in 1971-72.

"I never played volleyball until high school, but it was in my gene pool, I guess," she said.

After graduation, she took high school coaching jobs in Louisville and Bowling Green, Ky. In 1976, she moved into the college ranks as head coach of women's track and cross country at Western Kentucky University.

Her career then led her to coaching jobs at Cal-Davis, the University of Kansas and Dartmouth College. At Dartmouth, she not only coached women's track, she was also in charge of hurdlers and sprinters on the men's team.

In July of 1992, Smith College hired her as head coach of track and cross country, and lecturer in the Department of Exercise and Sports Studies. She coached cross country for 11 years before choosing to concentrate on track.

Over the years, Smithies have learned to love her dedication to the sport, and her always-candid approach with them.

"Coaching is a challenge, because you get all different types of student/athletes, but coaching has always been a passion with me, and it helps me remember how hard my parents worked when I was growing up," she said.

In the late 1970s, when she was coaching at Western Kentucky, she had a chance to meet Wilma Rudolph.

"It was so exciting to talk with her, to meet the person who had inspired me to pursue track as my career path," she said.

Garry Brown can be reached at geeman1918@yahoo.com

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