UNDER THE BANNER
What's Going On In and Around Black College Sports
HOWARD GOES IVY LEAGUE: University of Pennsylvania Assistant Men's Basketball Coach Gil
Jackson has accepted the head coaching position
at Howard University. Jackson, who has spent the past 16
years on the sidelines withPenn Head Coach Fran Dunphy, will
begin his tenureatthe MEAC school, which is also a member of
the Historic Black Colleges and Universities
(HBCU)com-munity, shortly.
"Obviously he will be missed here at Penn, but we are overjoyed at what this will mean for him," Dunphy said. "He's worked long and hard for this opportunity and he certainly deserves it. We wish him all the best in this new endeavor."
Jacksonhas been instrumental in helping the Quakers to nine Ivy League Championships and eight NCAA tournament appearances since he began at Penn in 1989. Coming on board as a volunteer coach, Jackson took over as head coach of the Quaker JV program and, as an assistant to the varsity program, was given the task of developing the pressure-defense. This assignment built upon strengths Jackson had demonstrated as head basketball coach of the Sanford School, a distinguished private high school in Delaware.
Jacksonserved as the Ivy League representative to the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Assistant Coaches Committee for the second-straight year in 2005.
A 1969 graduate of Elizabethtown College, Jackson was a two-time All-Middle Atlantic Conference selection, team captain and 1,000-point scorer. He was also inducted into his alma mater's athletic hall of fame.
Jackson resides in Wilmington, Del., with his wife, the former Patricia A. Wilkinson, a physical education teacher in Pennsylvania's Rosetree Media School District.
SWEAT OFF TRACK: Norfolk State athletics director
Marty Miller announced Monday that LaVerne
Sweat is retiring from her position as NSU
women's track and field and cross country coach, effective July 1. She
will be replaced on an interim basis by Ronda
Berard, who has served as assistant women's
track and cross country coach for the last ten years.
Sweat will remain in her position as the athletic department's senior woman administrator, where her duties will focus on the areas of compliance and academic enhancement. "I've been in this business a long time, and I've enjoyed my tenure as coach at Norfolk State," Sweat said. "I just feel that I have done all I can do, with the ultimate being an Olympic coach. I thought this would be a good time to give coach Berard the opportunity to step into my place. She understands what the program is about."
"I accepted Coach Sweat's retirement resignation reluctantly, because we're losing an outstanding track and field coach," Miller said. "But I am happy to have her to assist me with other administrative duties."
Sweat has coached the NSU women's track program since 1988. In that time, she won a total of 10 CIAA championships (in cross country, indoor and outdoor track) and two MEAC track championships. Sweat, a Norfolk native, was the first female president of the CIAA in the 1980s. She was the NAIA National Coach of the Year in 1981 and was voted NCAA Division II Coach of the Decade in 1991.
Her ultimate accomplishment came when she was selected to be an assistant coach for the United States track and field team at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. Aside from her stint with the national team in 2000, Sweat was selected as head coach of the U.S. team at the World University Games in Bucharest, Romania, in 1991, and was head coach for the U.S. at the Junior Pan American Games in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1993.
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