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Rejuvenated and empowered by his valuable experiences in China as the middle distance coach for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Women's Track & Field Team, Lady Vol Head Coach J.J. Clark is back for his seventh season at the helm of the Tennessee women's cross country and track & field squads. Under his command this year will be the largest roster in the 34-year history of the women's program at UT.
Clark will continue to impart the valuable principles he has always shared with his runners, helping them be successful in competition, in the classroom and in life. Those ideals have allowed Tennessee to consistently compete for championships and NCAA berths, develop All-SEC and All-South Region caliber runners and produce well-rounded student-athletes who have garnered such honors as NCAA Woman of the Year finalist, United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association and SEC Scholar Athlete of the Year, and Academic All-American.
Since leaving his post at Florida and taking over the Big Orange reins in 2002, Clark wasted little time in becoming Tennessee's all-time winningest cross country coach. He shot past that threshold in 2005, surpassing Terry Crawford (303-76-1 from 1974-83), and hasn't looked back since.
The Tennessee skipper begins the 2008 campaign with a sterling record of 622-181-1 (.774) in six seasons, and he has led his charges to five NCAA Championship berths, four NCAA South Region titles and three Southeastern Conference trophies -- all program bests.
During his time in Knoxville, Clark's Lady Vols also have claimed 17 team victories in 41 competitions and charted UT season-best victory totals in 2003 (99-31), 2004 (121-25) and 2005 (125-32). Additionally, his squads have sported a stellar 116-18 (.866) overall record versus Southeastern Conference teams from 2002-07.
After missing out on the NCAA meet in 2007 for the first time during his stay in Big Orange Country, Clark is anxious to get the ball rolling in 2008. His optimism is buoyed by the fact that he returns eight letterwinners and loses only one from last season's squad, which tallied a 104-19 record and finished second in the SEC and fourth in the NCAA South Region.
During his 16-year cross country coaching career, which also includes 10 seasons at the University of Florida, Clark has totaled six NCAA South crowns, coming in 1997, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005, and five SEC titles, occurring in 1996, 1997, 2003, 2004 and 2005. He also has piloted 10 different clubs to NCAA Championships berths, including his Florida teams in 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998 and 1999, and his Tennessee squads from 2002 to 2006. His 1997 UF entry at the NCAA meet logged his top national finish at 16th.
Those kinds of results have left Clark's cross country peers with a very favorable impression about his leadership abilities. On five occasions, he has been named NCAA South Region (1997, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) and SEC (1996, 1997, 2003, 2004, 2005) Women's Coach of the Year. Joining soccer's Angela Kelly and volleyball's Rob Patrick as UT's fall sport SEC Coaches of the Year in 2004, Clark also aided Tennessee in becoming the first school since Florida in 1996 to claim that trifecta of awards. Clark, who was on the UF staff at the time, is the only coach to help two different SEC schools accomplish that feat.
During his first six seasons at UT, Clark groomed 12 athletes who combined for 24 All-South Region certificates, including the entire scoring five in 2004. In conference action, his totals include 11 runners with 17 citations.
Among his most-decorated standouts have been Sharon Dickie, the program's first four-time NCAA qualifier and four-time recipient of All-South and All-SEC accolades (1998-2002); Brooke Novak, who was awarded all-region and all-conference recognition three times during her career (2001-04); Katie Flaute, who snared All-SEC and All-South accolades three seasons in a row (2004-06); and Felicia Guliford, a three-time All-South and two-time All-SEC runner (2002-05).
Adding her name to that illustrious group in 2007 was Sarah Bowman, who picked up the third All-SEC nod of her career and her second All-South citation as a junior. This season, the Warrenton, Va., native will attempt to join Dickie as the only four-time conference honorees in program annals.
In the classroom, Clark's high expectations have been met with equal success, as his cross country troops have tallied 56 SEC Academic Honor Roll recognitions since 2002. Five members of his squad, Bowman (2007, 2008), Megan Cauble (2004), Flaute (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007), Guliford (2005, 2007) and Phoebe Wright (2008), earned ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District IV Cross Country/Track & Field Team acclaim. Guliford became Clark's first Academic All-American in fall 2004, when she was recognized by the Women's Intercollegiate Cross Country Coaches Association. Flaute was the second, earning second-team ESPN The Magazine honors in spring 2007, while Bowman joined the club in 2008 by garnering ESPN The Magazine second-team esteem.
Additionally, his team and individuals are consistently honored by the USTFCCCA for academics, including 2007-08. Bowman, too, earned 2008 USTFCCCA Indoor Track & Field Scholar Athlete of the Year.
Prior to his stint with the Lady Volunteers, Clark spent his previous 10 seasons at Florida. While in Gainesville, Clark led the Lady Gators to their first-ever team appearance at the NCAA Cross Country Championships in 1994. Following that campaign, UF was extended invitations four more times to the national meet under Clark's supervision as cross country coach.
In SEC action, Clark guided Florida to league titles in 1996 and 1997 and runner-up outcomes in 1998 and 1999. Among his UF athletes drawing kudos for their standout cross country performances were Becki Wells, the 1995 and 1996 SEC champion, and Hilary White, the 2000 SEC Freshman Athlete of the Year. Additionally, Wells and Coralena Velsen picked up All-America citations during his watch in Gator Country.
While Clark has shown a knack for producing successful cross country runners and teams, it is his work on the track that first earned him credit as one of the nation's best coaches. At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, Clark had a pair of pupils participating. His wife, Jearl Miles-Clark, and his sister, Hazel Clark, competed in the 800-meter run. Miles-Clark, who finished sixth, made her fifth appearance at the Games, while Clark participated for the second time after joining Miles-Clark and older sister Joetta Clark to comprise the U.S. 800m contingent at the 2000 Olympiad in Sydney. In 2008, Hazel Clark again made the U.S. team, this time with her brother as a member of the women's coaching staff.
As the head of the UT women's track & field program, Clark has already taken the Orange and White to the mountaintop in that sport. His 2005 squad grabbed the first NCAA women's track & field championship in school history when it won the indoor affair at the Randal Tyson Center in Fayetteville, Ark., after also hoisting the SEC Indoor trophy in that venue a couple weeks earlier. Outdoors in 2005, Clark's unit saw its league and national title hopes dashed when indoor 800m collegiate record-holder Nicole Cook suffered a leg injury at the end of the indoor campaign. Still, UT muscled out placings of third and fourth, respectively, at the SEC and NCAA Championships.
Those performances resulted in multiple accolades for the then-third-year head man. Among his haul of kudos were U.S. Track Coaches Association Indoor National Coach of the Year, South Region Indoor Track & Field Coach of the Year and SEC Indoor Track & Field Coach of the Year. After his outdoor squad added the 2005 NCAA Mideast Regional hardware to its trophy case, he also collected USTCA Mideast Region Coach of the Year distinction as well.
In 2007, Clark assembled another talented track & field unit. That group bonded together to win Tennessee its second SEC Indoor crown in the past three years and went on to compete for a national title before securing third place at the NCAA Indoor Championship meet. His peers recognized him yet again, naming him the SEC Women's Indoor Coach of the Year and the USTFCCCA Indoor South Region Women's Coach of the Year as well. He would repeat the latter of those honors in 2008.
One of the most respected distance coaches in the world, Clark was hired to direct the women's cross country and track & field programs at Tennessee on May 23, 2002. After a decade of success as an assistant coach from 1992 to 2002 at the University of Florida and spending the 1991-92 year there as a graduate assistant, Clark accepted the challenge of awakening a sleeping giant and restoring the UT program to the luster of its heyday during the 1980s and early 1990s.
Clark has experience in that area, as he arrived in Gainesville in 1991 and helped transform a once dormant middle distance/cross country program into one that was respected, both nationally and internationally. In fact, his group of athletes played a key role in Florida's Southeastern Conference indoor and outdoor track & field titles in 1997 and 1998, its indoor crown in 2002 and its third-place national finish indoors in 2002. It has been estimated that his charges accumulated more than 650 points in SEC action and 110-plus at the NCAA level during his 10 seasons as a full-time aide at UF.
Known as much for his character as his coaching ability, Clark's sterling reputation for a near perfect graduation rate and a habit of developing student-athletes into champions and confident young ladies has been well received by recruits and their families. Those traits enabled him to attract several of the nation's number-one prospects in a variety of events to his former school and are serving him well as he and his staff have built a perennial contender at Tennessee.
During his tenure with the Gators, Clark groomed two athletes who combined for three SEC Athlete of the Year awards in cross country and track, and he developed competitors who racked up 44 NCAA All-America citations and 32 conference championship plaques. Among those were his sister, Hazel, a three-time national champ in the 800 meters and the SEC Indoor Track & Field Athlete of the Year in 1998 and 1999, and Wells, a two-time victor in the mile/1500 meters and the 1996 SEC Cross Country Athlete of the Year. Both own the school records in their respective events, part of a total of 12 such marks accomplished by Clark-tutored athletes at Florida.
Outdoors, Clark coached two national champions and six SEC winners in the middle distance events. Those athletes contributed to Florida's top-10 NCAA appearances in 1992 (2nd), 1997 (6th) and 2002 (6th) as well as SEC crowns in 1992, 1997 and 1998 and a runner-up outcome in 1999. Both Hazel Clark and Wells advanced to NCAAs and carried home the top prize, as Clark won the 800m in 1998 and Wells was victorious in the 1500m in 1997. Clark was also SEC 800m champ in 1997 and 1998 and claimed the 1500m title in 1999.
Indoors, J.J. Clark's UF ledger included three national titles and 15 SEC crowns, spreading across the 800m, mile, 3000m and distance medley relay. That talent was reflected in Florida's taking of the conference hardware in 1992, 1997 and 2002 and achieving runner-up status in 1993, 1999, 2000 and 2001. In NCAA action, the Gators accumulated enough points to collect top-10 finishes in 1992 (1st), 1993 (3rd), 1996 (t4th), 1997 (5th), 1998 (6th), 1999 (4th), 2000 (t8th) and 2002 (3rd). Most notable among his individual indoor conference title-holders were Clark (800m, 1996-99) and Wells (mile, 1997 / 3000m, 1996-97), who went on to capture NCAA Championships in the 800m (1998-99) and mile run (1997), respectively.
As mentioned earlier, Clark's influence also extends into the international arena. Proof of that was most evident in 2000, when his sisters, Joetta and Hazel, and wife, Jearl, finished one-two-three in the 800 meters at the U.S. Olympic Trials and went on to represent the United States in Sydney. It is also reflected by Joetta's appearance in four Olympiads, Hazel's three Games appearances and seventh-place effort in 2000 and Jearl's incredible run of five Olympic trips. His spouse, a two-time gold medallist with U.S. 4x400m relays and the American record-holder in the 800m since 1999, won the half-mile race at the 2004 Olympic Trials and is a four-time U.S. outdoor champion in the 800m (1998, 1999, 2003, 2004) and the 400m (1993, 1995, 1997, 2002).
Clark also coached three-time Olympian Mark Everett to a No. 1 USA ranking and fourth-place world rating in the 800 meters and has recently coached Hazel (2000, 2005, 2006, 2008) and Treniere Clement (2005, 2006, 2007) to USA Outdoor titles in the 800m and 1500m, respectively. Nike recognized Clark for his work in continuing to develop world-class athletes, naming him the 1998 USA Elite Coach of the Year. Those kinds of results were also noticed and rewarded by his sport's national governing body, as he was named an assistant for the U.S. women at the 1999 IAAF World Track & Field Championships in Greece and later head coach of the 2001 team in Edmonton, Canada. The latter squad would achieve one of the best medal counts ever charted by an American contingent.
A product of Maplewood, N.J., and a graduate of Columbia High School, Clark made trips to Knoxville as a teen to watch his sister Joetta compete for the Lady Vols and saw her help UT win the 1981 AIAW National Outdoor Championship. Those examples left an impression on the younger brother, and he blazed his own trail in track and field.
First, he set his own standard of excellence in running, winning the New Jersey state title in the mile and two mile as a senior in 1982. With that kind of effort, he then earned a scholarship to run at Villanova, where he would develop into a sub-four minute miler in his competitive days en route to qualifying for the 1988 U.S Olympic Trials.
After graduating from VU in May of 1986 with a B.A. in communications, he would return to his prep alma mater and serve as assistant track coach. While at CHS from 1986 to 1989, he worked with the girls' and boys' middle distance and sprints corps. Then, in 1991, he would make his transition into collegiate coaching, serving as a graduate assistant at Florida for one year before being hired full time there.
Clark, who resides in Knoxville with his wife, Jearl, and son, Jorell, studied anatomy and physiology in graduate school at UF. Bridging the gap between his high school coaching and college experience, he also took courses in nutrition and exercise physiology in 1990 at Kean College in Union, N.J., and became certified as a licensed sports massage therapist in 1991 from the Florida School of Massage in Gainesville. His father is Joe Lewis Clark, the bat-wielding principal of Paterson, New Jersey's Eastside High School, depicted by actor Morgan Freeman in the 1989 movie "Lean on Me."
J.J. CLARK'S CAREER RECORD AT TENNESSEE
CLARK'S CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
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