Power 5 Trailblazer Challenge Takes Center Stage

The idea of this weekend’s Power 5 Trailblazer Challenge came up about one year ago during a discussion between Caryl Smith Gilbert and her husband Greg Gilbert.

At the time, Smith Gilbert was one of five women who oversee both the men’s and women’s track & field programs at a Power 5 institution. Beth Alford-Sullivan of Tennessee, Amy Deem of Miami (Fla.), Karen Dennis of Ohio State and Connie Price-Smith of Ole Miss joined Smith Gilbert in that distinction, while Texas named Tonja Buford-Bailey its interim coach midway through this past indoor season.

“I thought it would be a great idea to get those five teams to the same place at the same time to compete, so everyone could see what great accomplishments these head coaches have earned,” Smith Gilbert said during a recent phone interview. “It is good visibility for the sport, but it’s also good for people to know that women in leadership positions can be very successful.”

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Very few coaches have prospered as much in their careers – let alone in this past calendar year since the meet became a reality – as Alford-Sullivan, Deem, Dennis, Price-Smith and Smith Gilbert.

Alford-Sullivan won nine conference titles at Penn State between 2006 and 2014 and just this past year helped Christian Coleman capture The Bowerman, collegiate track & field’s highest honor.

Deem, whose Hurricanes have won 12 conference titles under her direction and was the head coach of the U.S. women’s track & field team at the 2012 Olympics, became just the 12th woman inducted into the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Coaches Hall of Fame this past December.

Dennis, the head women’s coach at the 2000 Olympics, has five Big Ten titles to her credit. Her fifth was historic, as this past indoor season she was the first woman in Big Ten history to lead a men’s team to a track & field title – the Buckeyes’ first league crown since 1993.

Price-Smith served as head women’s coach at the 2012 Olympics and won six conference titles at Southern Illinois. While at Ole Miss, Price-Smith watched her squads post their best finishes in program history at the SEC Indoor Championships in 2017.

Smith Gilbert has won 12 conference titles between her stints at UCF and Southern California. The Trojan men and women have been on the podium three times under Smith Gilbert’s watch, including a third-place outdoor showing by the Women of Troy last year and a runner-up finish indoors by the men this year.

Each of those five women will bring their men’s and women’s teams to sunny Los Angeles this weekend for a scored meet that won’t be lacking for action.

“Everybody is excited and looking forward to it, because the teams are so deep,” said Smith Gilbert, who squads are both billed in the top-10 of the Preseason National Team Rankings. “One team or another has distance or throws – or all of it – or sprints and hurdles. It’s going to be a great meet, because every team has something very talented to offer.”

More importantly, though, the Power 5 Trailblazer Challenge is about the future and continues to prove that women are making headway in a male-dominated profession.

“It shows young men and women that women can be in leadership positions, so that when we have powerful men in leadership positions, they won’t be afraid or apprehensive about hiring a woman, because they’ve seen it,” Smith Gilbert said of her and her colleague’s success. “Maybe we were their coach. Maybe they saw us coach. Maybe they heard about us. It helps in a lot of ways.”