USTFCCCA Convention Highlight: Featured Symposium Presenters

NEW ORLEANS – Learning directly from some of the best track & field and cross country through three days of Symposiums presentations is one of the highlights of the USTFCCCA Convention experience, and top-of-the-profession coaches are in no short supply for the 2013 Convention in Orlando, Fla., from December 16-19.

Among the 42 presenters are some of the country’s preeminent coaches in each discipline of track & field and cross country. Sprint, hurdles and relay coaches will learn from — among many others — legendary Baylor head coach Clyde Hart; endurance coaches from Notre Dame’s Tim Connelly; jumps and combined events coaches from newly hired Oklahoma head coach Jim Van Hootegem; and throws coaches from Florida’s Steve Lemke.

These four presenters are just a sampling of the depth of top-quality professionals who will share their expertise through Symposium presentations, access to which are included with Convention registration. The full list of presenters, along with their topics and biographies, can be found on the Symposiums page on the 2013 Convention Website.

Hart is currently the Director of Track & Field at Baylor and 400 meters coach, having built such a legacy in the open 400 and the 4×400 relay that the program has earned the moniker "Quarter-Miler U." Since taking over the Baylor program in 1963, Hart has guided his long sprinters to 34 national titles, including 20 national relay crowns, and more than 500 All-America accolades.  At the international level he has served as either the collegiate or personal coach for Olympic gold medalists in six straight Olympics dating back to the Atlanta Games in 1996, with at least two golds in each of the past five.

Connelly has built a Notre Dame women’s cross country program from the ground-up into one of the nation’s top squads on an annual basis, and has done likewise for the Irish women’s distance program on the oval. His cross country teams have been nationally ranked in each of the past 13 seasons including the current campaign, and the Irish women finished top-10 at nationals four consecutive years from 2002 to 2005, including a third-place finish in ’02 and a fourth-place showing in ’04. On the track his runners have earned more than 20 All-America accolades and nearly 100 All-BIG EAST honors, including 13 event titles.

 Van Hootegem was long considered one of the top assistant coaches in the country before Oklahoma hired him in the summer of 2013 for his first collegiate head coaching position. Prior to joining the Sooners, Van Hootegem was a key component of a Texas A&M track & field program that was among the nation’s top teams on a yearly basis, accumulating seven NCAA championships, 14 conference titles, and 22 individual NCAA champions. He found similar success as an assistant at Arkansas earlier in his career, where he was a part of five NCAA championships.

As the throws coach at Florida for the past nine years, Lemke has found great success at every stage of his career, both at the collegiate and international levels. He has mentored eight individuals to a combined 13 Olympic berths, and at least one of the athletes he has coached has qualified for each of the Games since Atlanta in 1996. At the NCAA level, 11 of his student-athletes have stood atop the podium at the NCAA Championships: six at Florida, three at UTEP and two at Arizona State. He has coached at numerous Olympics and World Championships, and has served as the National Throws Coordinator at both the Western Australia Institute of Sport and the Queensland Academy of Sport.