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Class of 2009 National Track & Field Hall of Fame Includes Joetta Clark Diggs, Four-Time Female 800m Olympian
From USA Track & FieldNovember 19, 2009
Indianapolis, IN
Some of the greatest athletes of their generations, including track & field legends Joetta Clark Diggs, Andre Phillips, Randy Williams and Willie Steele, are joined by coach Dr. Ken Foreman as the 2009 inductees into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame. The Class of 2009 was announced on Tuesday, November 17 by USA Track & Field.
The Class of 2009 will be inducted Saturday evening, December 5, at the Jesse Owens Awards and Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, held in conjunction with USATF's 2009 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, IN.
"All of us at USA Track & Field congratulate these five talented individuals on their election to the National Track & Field Hall of Fame," said USATF Chairman and President Stephanie Hightower. "Their contributions have added tremendously to the legacy of USA Track & Field, and we all look forward to their induction ceremony next month in Indianapolis."
A seven-time winner of the women's 800 meters at the Millrose Games, Joetta Clark Diggs won numerous individual national championships and is a four-time Olympian.
Andre Phillips did his part in adding to the amazing legacy of U.S. men's 400m hurdles greats by winning gold at the 1988 Olympic Games and ending his career with nine top ten world rankings.
During his career as one of the world's elite athletes, Willie Steele won an Olympic gold medal and was ranked as the world's finest men's long jumper on four occasions.
Randy Williams was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year for consideration in the Veteran Athlete category. Williams was a two-time Olympic medalist in the long jump and was ranked #1 in the world in 1972.
Noted especially for his contribution to women's track and field, coach inductee Dr. Ken Foreman founded and coached the Falcon Track Club, served three stints as the head coach at Seattle Pacific University and was the head coach for a U.S. Olympic Team, World Outdoor Championships team and a U.S. World Cross Country Team.
About the National Track & Field Hall of Fame
There are four categories in which individuals may be voted into the Hall of Fame. Those categories are: Modern athletes, retired less than 25 years; Veteran athletes, retired more than 25 years; Coaches; and Contributors. Each category has its own selection committee that chooses the finalists from the list of nominations. Members of the selection committees examine the nominations and evaluate their merit based on objective criteria. Elections for Modern and Veteran athletes are held each year.Beginning in 2005, elections for Coaches are held in odd numbered years, with Contributors elections in even numbered years. Hall of Fame inductees, members of the National Track & Field Hall of Fame Board and Committees and members of the media comprise the electorate for the National Track & Field Hall of Fame.
Biographies, Class of 2009, National Track & Field Hall of Fame
Modern Athletes
Joetta Clark DiggsDuring an amazing career that lasted nearly 25 years, Clark Diggs was recognized for being one of the greatest, and most consistent, women's 800m runners in U.S. history. A four-time Olympian ('88, '92, '96, '00), who competed in six Olympic Trials, Clark Diggs was a six-time U.S. Indoor champion ('88, '89, '90, '96, '97, '98); five-time U.S. Outdoor champion ('88, '89, '92, '93, '94); a four-time NCAA champion; and a two-time bronze medalist at the World Indoor Championships ('93, '97). She was the 1986 Olympic Festival champion, and the 1980 USA Junior Champion. She is also well known for her success at the Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden in New York, where she won seven times.
Andre Phillips
In winning the gold medal in the men's 400m hurdles at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Andre Phillips picked the best possible time to notch his only career win over his idol and fellow National Track & Field Hall of Famer Edwin Moses. Phillips, who won the 1985 World Cup, the 1985 USA Outdoor title and was the 1981 NCAA 400m hurdles champion, was nine times ranked top ten in the world by Track & Field News, and ranked #1 globally in 1985, 1986 and 1988. He was world ranked #3 in the 110m hurdles in 1985.
Veteran Athletes
Willie SteeleRecognized as the world's finest men's long jumper of the late 1940s, Willie Steele was the favorite to win at the 1948 Olympic Games. Despite a sore ankle that allowed him only two attempts, both of Steele's jumps were good enough to win the gold over the world's best. A two-time USA Outdoor champion, Steele was the 1948 Olympic Trials champion, a two-time NCAA long jump champion, was considered the world's best long jumper in 1942 and 1946, and was world ranked #1 by Track & Field News in 1947 and 1948. He died on September 19, 1989.
Randy Williams
The Olympic Games men's long jump gold medalist in 1972 and silver medalist in 1976, Randy Williams qualified for the 1980 Olympic Team, but did not compete because of the U.S. boycott. Williams won numerous national titles during his career including: the USA Outdoor crown in 1973; he was USA Indoor champion in 1973; the NCAA Outdoor champion in 1972; and the NCAA Indoor champion in 1973. Williams was world ranked four times by Track & Field News, and was ranked #1 in the world following the 1972 season.
Coach
Dr. Ken ForemanThe head coach at Seattle Pacific University from 1950-1957, 1965-1978, and 1985-1999, Foreman founded the Falcon Track Club in 1955 and served as the squad's coach in 1977. Foreman also founded the SportsWest TC, which he directed 1977-1998. Foreman's Falcon TC squad captured the AAU cross country title in 1972, and he is well known for coaching National Track & Field Hall of Famer Doris Brown Heritage (5-time World Cross Country women's champion 1967-1971). Olympians he coached included Kelly Blair-LaBounty, Lorna Griffin, Pam Spencer and Sherron Walker. Foreman-coached athletes won 14 AAU titles (outdoor, indoor, cross country) by two athletes and one AIAW title. Foreman was named the U.S. women's head coach for the 1980 Olympic Games, and served as the Team USA head coach at the 1983 World Outdoor Championships. He was the U.S. World Cross Country Team coach in 1967, 1970 and 1973, served as the AAU Women's LDR Chair from 1968-1974, and was the recipient of the AAU/USATF Joseph Robichaux Women's T&F Award 1978.
For more information on the National Track & Field Hall of Fame, see www.usatf.org.
Here are recent interviews with Joetta Clark Diggs and Dr. Ken Foreman, provided by USATF. For interviews with Andre Phillips and Randy Williams, see the USATF Press Release
Interview with Joetta Clark Diggs
Q: What are your feelings about being elected to the National Track & Field Hall of Fame?A: When I saw the list of athletes that I was up against this year I thought it was a solid list as always. I'm honored and thrilled to see that I had been elected. I'm just glad I'm alive to see it. For my family, my coaches and all the people that have been so instrumental in my career, I'm glad that they're all still here to hear the good news and to participate in the event.
Q: How did your career in track and field begin?
A: I started in track and field by running in various camps as a sprinter when I was eight and nine years old. At that time my father was the director of parks and recreation in Essex County. So I would run the 100 and 50 yard dash, and eventually he moved me up to middle distance and distance running, and that's where I stayed ever since. I would travel to AAU meets across the country and I would run cross country as a youngster when I was 10 or 11, and when I was 13 I went to junior nationals and I ran 5:09 for the 1500m and 2:18 for the 800m. I went into high school the next year and my high school coach brought me along. I started as a sprinter and then my father wanted to dispel the notion that American blacks couldn't run anything above the quarter, so he put us in the 800m and cross country. He wanted us to travel the path of the road less taken at that time.
Q: How did the 800m become your specialty?
A: The reality is we focused more on the 800m in college because we had other girls who could run the 1500m. I could run a good 1500m or mile, but in my freshman year in high school I ran 2:12 and then I went 2:05 as a sophomore when I was 15 (years old). So I was recruited to run the 800m and 1500m, and be the fifth person in cross country. I pretty much stuck with the 800m because once I got out of college, in order to get in the European meets, my 800m was the only thing that was even remotely close to running against the world because everyone back then was 1:55, 1:56, where 1:59 got you 10th or 11th back before the (Berlin) wall came down in 1989. In the states I could run both, but in the world market and in order to make a career out of it, I needed to run the 800m.
Q: Why did you choose to attend the University of Tennessee?
A: Back in 1980 I was the top high school recruit, male or female in the country, in any sport. That was not me saying that, it was Sports Illustrated saying that. My last four schools were Georgetown, Tennessee, Indiana University and UVA (University of Virginia). I came to Tennessee and Terry Crawford (1988 U.S. Olympic women's head coach, and current USATF Director of Coaching) was the coach then. She sold me on her bringing in a great freshman class, and Delisa (Walton-Floyd) was there and she took second her freshman year at nationals, which was my senior year of high school. So I came to Knoxville and had a great bunch of girls come in with me and we ended up winning the AIAW my freshman year, and we had a top team during all of my four years at Tennessee. So we came in, we graduated, we won titles, and we're all doing well now.
Q: As an elite athlete you competed on four U.S. Olympic Teams. What was that like for you?
A: I tried out twice in high school and also in college in '84 and I didn't make that team, so when I finally made the team in '88 I was excited because it was at a point where it was still East Germany and the Eastern bloc countries and they were running fast and I had to decide if I would stay in the sport or go to work. I decided to hang around a couple more years and I'm glad that I did that. Making four Olympic teams was exciting, and when you're doing it, however, you don't realize that you're doing it. You only realize it when you start getting awards or when you retire because you're so busy trying to run fast, throw further or jump higher that you don't sit back and look at your accomplishments until you're completely done. I didn't really relish that at the time because I had more to do.
Q: You won two medals in World Indoor Championships competition. How rewarding was that?
A: I enjoy running indoors. I ran 1:59 both times at the World Indoor Championships. The first one was in Indianapolis in 1987 and I made the finals. I enjoyed the boards and it didn't have as many people as well. Outdoors you have a lot more women in those races. For me I got two bronze medals and a world record in the distance medley I think it was, or the sprint medley indoors, and that mark still stands.
Q: You're also well known for your success at the Millrose Games, where you were victorious on seven occasions. What did running at Madison Square Garden mean to you?
A: For years we would go to the Garden to see all-time greats compete and I thought that one day I'll be able to run there, and lo and behold I got my chance to run when I was 15 and I ran every year until I retired when I was 38. I missed one year running at the Garden in '84, but I ran in either 20 or 21 Millrose Games. That was special to be in the stands as a kid and then be able to go back and run in front of your home crowd was something special.
Q: The Clark family (Coach J.J. Clark, 5-time Olympian Jearl Miles-Clark, 5-time USA Outdoor champion Hazel Clark) has meant a great deal to USA Track & Field through the years. What has it been like to be a part of a family that has meant so much to track and field in the U.S.?
A: I think that USA Track & Field, and track and field period, has done so much for us as individuals. Being awarded a scholarship to college and graduating from Tennessee, my brother graduated from Villanova University where he was a fine runner himself, having run under four minutes in the mile, and then my sister graduated from the University of Florida. Track has been something that has afforded us the opportunity to go to college for free, travel across the country and around the world to meet great people and I think, when you look at everything, we are solid people and that's the way our parents raised us. Our family is a close-knit family and we believe in the sport and giving back, and I'm really thankful for the opportunities we've had through track and field.
Q: Now that you've retired from competition, what are you doing these days?
A: My life now has come full circle. I've been married for ten years and I have a daughter who is seven (years old) and I home school her. I have a foundation, The Joetta Clark Diggs Sports Foundation and we do programs for kids K through 12 dealing with obesity, life skills and nutrition. So my programs are now the programs that are in school, so instead of doing gym and health they do my program for 10, 12 or 16 weeks. I run free track and field camps in the summer from 8:30 to 3 o'clock every day. You drop them off and pick them up. I also do motivational speaking engagements with corporations, colleges, high schools and different books. And then my first book, I wrote it by myself with no ghost writers or co-authors, and that book will come out in December.
Interview with Dr. Ken Foreman
Q: What was it like for you to learn that you had been elected to the Hall of Fame?A: Actually, having been nominated twice and passed over, I was in total shock. I couldn't believe that I had been nominated again, let alone voted in to the Hall of Fame. It's very exciting.
Q: How did you first get involved in coaching?
H: I was coaching at a private high school in 1947, and there were a couple of girls who hung around the edges and I started teaching them the long jump, and interestingly enough, the shot put as well. Subsequently I was hired at Seattle Pacific University, where my primary coaching responsibilities were men's basketball, track and field and cross country. In 1955, a high school coach called me to tell me that he had seen a young lady on the track that was beating his best sprinters, and he wanted to know if I would be interested in looking at her. My professional training had told me that if a woman sweats hard or lifted weights, her uterus would fall out (laughter). So I mulled the thing over and finally I asked them to bring her in after my basketball practice, which he did and we set a Coleman lantern at one end of a cinder strip and the young lady at the other end. I shot my gun into the night and she came flashing past the 100-yard mark in 11.5 (seconds). I had no idea what that meant. I told her to run it again and she did in the same time and that's when I suddenly realized this child was running in bare feet, and I also realized she had some talent. That was in October. In January of that year she ran in the national AAU meet and she performed very well against Ed Temple's stable of Tigerbelles; Mae Faggs, Lucinda Williams, Willye White, etc. So I suddenly became a sprint coach and I scarcely knew how to set up a set of blocks. Her name was Marsha Cosgrove and she went on to win a spot on the Melbourne Olympic team in 1956. In 1957, I went back to graduate school and taught at USC for three years, then I started coaching at Seattle Pacific again, and that's when Doris Brown fell into my life and she ran the first sub-5 minute mile by a woman, and I am suddenly a distance guru, and scarcely knew how to draw up a training schedule for distance runners. So it really was fortuitous that two outstanding young ladies came into my life and they made a coach of me. So I began working with girls and women at that time.
Q: Were you a track athlete before you became a coach.
A: In high school I was a four-sport guy. I was actually the world interscholastic rope climb champion and at 167 pounds I was fifth in the city of Los Angeles with the 12-pound shot put - I threw 54 feet, 7 inches. When I graduated in 1940, I went to work as a carpenter, but I was interested, for some reason, in the javelin. So I bought some javelins, fooled around with the javelins until December 8, 1941 when I enlisted in the Navy. When I came back I had the G.I. Bill and I went to USC and talked to their great coach Dean Cromwell and he gave me a pair of track shoes and a bonifide javelin, and so I began throwing the javelin. I also started participating in gymnastics again. I injured my heel planting the javelin and became a full-time gymnast and earned two all-American certificates at USC as a gymnast. When I went to Seattle Pacific they did not have any gymnastics equipment, so I started coaching track at the college level in 1950 and have been coaching ever since.
Q: During your career you founded the Falcon Track Club and the SportsWest Track Club. What was that like for you?
A: We teamed up with the University of Washington for a short while because it was very difficult raising funds for clubs. Sports West/Nordstrom Corporation chose to sponsor us for a couple years. Almost all the women early on were in club sports. It wasn't until 1975 that I was able to start a university team at Seattle Pacific, and we were one of the first college programs in America at that time and there were no scholarships. I got some of the best athletes available at that time at Seattle Pacific, so we had a head start and a pretty good program in an all girl club structure.
Q: You are considered one of the founding fathers of the athletic program at Seattle Pacific. What are your thoughts about your time there?
A: I guess that's true. They had a basketball team and they played only local schools. In 1953, I was appointed as the athletic director. I had what I thought was a strong track and field program. Our kids were competing at the Drake Relays and in the national NAIA meet in 1952, so we were headed in the right direction. I initiated cross country and we were beating the University of Washington and all the local schools. I hired a guy who was a baseball nut and he started a baseball program, and we also started a wrestling program. We had our club track and field program for girls and women operative right alongside. Somewhat later I befriended a great gymnastics coach at the YMCA in downtown Seattle. His name was George Lewis and he was producing Olympic quality women's gymnasts and I invited him to join us. I met a guy one day while I was running along the canal building boats and he was a crew nut and he started our crew program. I guess it's fair to say that I was involved with starting the athletic program at Seattle Pacific.
Q: You are best known to many as the coach of National Track & Field Hall of Famer Doris Brown Heritage. What made her so special?
A: She was not the most talented or most naturally gifted athlete that I've worked with, but she certainly was the most tenacious. She just wouldn't give up. She always did one more than I asked her to do. She ran the men into the ground and she was a gentle spirit. She was initially more concerned about her compatriots on the starting line than she was about herself. I have a great picture of her standing in the international cross country race in Maryland and she has her hands clasped behind her back and I'm sure she's thinking, 'I hope you do well, but I hope I do better.' She was a special lady.
Q: You coached a number of Olympians during your career. How special is it to lead someone to those heights?
A: Well it's pretty special. I make no claims about having done so unless I worked at least two years with an athlete. I could name seven such persons that I had the privilege to work with all the way to the Olympic Games. I guess, in the coaching profession, if you get somebody to stand on the top of the podium at any level it is a pretty heady experience. But seeing your athletes in a USA uniform competing in an international competition is more than heady. It frequently has brought me to tears to see my athletes performing, competing at that level. I don't know what else I can say. It's a great, great personal thrill to even be associated with such people, but to know that you might've had a little part in their lives, helping them get there is a great, great satisfaction.
Q: What would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment in coaching?
A: I would have to go back to the fact that I played a significant role in creating opportunities for women to participate in sports. As I look back at my career spanning over 62 years now, I hold that as one of the top things that I've been permitted to do. Secondly, being able to associate with such a vast number of great, great human beings, both as athletes and as fellow coaches, I don't know how anybody could want any more from their life than that.
Q: What are you doing these days?
A: I'm coaching at a high school. When we moved to Hawaii, my wife is a purser for Delta Airlines and she was moved, so I had to resign my position at Seattle Pacific in 1999. We arrived here and discovered that the local high school was looking for a track coach, and so I volunteered before actually being hired. I've coached their cross country and track teams for the last 10 years. I also spend three to four hours a day trying to write and I have a yard that needs lots of attention. I build rock walls and pour cement sidewalks. My life is as full as it possibly can be.