lantern
New day dawns for OSU track and field
Anthony Puleio
Issue date: 8/8/06
Section: Sports
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Media Credit: Courtesy of Glenn Collins
Senior Glenn Collins (left) and Robert Gary (right) at the 2005 Cross Country banquet.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>The Ohio State track and field program will enter a new era this season. When former coach Russ Rogers announced his retirement on June 5, the program essentially lost two coaches as Rogers commandeered both the men's and women's teams for 18 and 12 years, respectively.
Ohio State has now separated the programs, with Robert Gary taking over the men's team and Karen Dennis leading the women's team. Both coaches were hired from within OSU. Gary has been the men's cross country coach since 1996, which he will continue, and Dennis has been the men's and women's sprints and hurdles assistant coach since 2002. The two were brought into the program through Rogers and hope to duplicate his success.
Gary, a 1996 graduate of OSU, has competed on a national and international level as an athlete, gaining bids to two separate U.S. Olympic teams in the 3000-meter steeplechase. He's a five-time Ohio Cross Country Coach of the Year and the 2005 Great Lakes Region Cross Country Coach of the Year. He's coached 13 Big Ten distance champions and 12 All-Americans and over the past four years. A total of 26 student-athletes have gained Ohio State Scholar-Athlete honors under his guidance.
Dennis, the first women's coach since 1993, has been coaching for more than 25 years in the collegiate, national and international ranks and has produced numerous conference champions, All-Americans and Olympians. She coached the women's track and field team at Michigan State University, her alma mater, for 15 seasons with 11 of those spent as the head coach and earning District IV Coach of the Year in 1982.
In 1992, she took over at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas as the women's cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field coach, where she stayed for 11 seasons and produced 12 All-Americans. She was the women's sprints coach at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She is on the USA Track and Field International Competition Committee and is the past president of the Athletic Congress Women's Track Coaches Association. She's also served as a member of the NCAA Track and Field Committee and the NCAA Track Coaches Association.
For Gary, it is a dream job and one that he loves.
"The best thing about Ohio State to me has always been the people," he said. "We have such a huge team, but ultimately we're all working towards a goal. (Track and field) is pretty unique compared to other sports."
Despite her coaching positions at MSU and UNLV, Dennis said this is her best opportunity as a coach.
"When I was at Michigan State, we did not have a full compliment of scholarships to work with and that makes a big difference when you're being competitive with other schools in the Big Ten and throughout the country," she said. "And when I was at UNLV, it just did not have the academic reputation and recruiting through the desert is very different than recruiting to The Ohio State University."
She also said she loves the reciprocal relationship she gets from coaching her young athletes.
"I just enjoy their youth, their enthusiasm and their intelligence," she said. "It's always a pleasure to be energized by these young people, particularly here in the Big Ten conference."
Rogers left the program with some key athletes in place, but both coaches know they will have to continue to attract top caliber athletes from within Ohio, forming a "recruiting wall" around the state.
"Certainly the talent is here, what we have to do now is get them here," Dennis said. "We've got a world-renowned academic reputation at Ohio State, we've got athletic tradition and we have the recruiting capability. What we have to do now is get a staff on board to go out and attract the talent within the state to stay in the state."
The high profile of some of OSU's other varsity sports is an added advantage.
"Track is pretty specific, but you can get a lot of kids that just want to be a part of something," Gary said. "It's just (about) creating that special culture, or making people aware of it, something that I think is pretty well in place already."
Gary said he hopes to create more awareness of the program by potentially structuring meets in a more streamlined manner enabling them to be completed in a couple of hours, perhaps holding as few as 10 events. This would give them a more international feel and possibly help foster more public interest.
The next step for both coaches is to select a staff that will help each team reach their goals. They both have candidates in mind but there has been an overwhelming amount of interest, so it may take some time.
"We're going to do a national search and get the best people in here," Dennis said.