Barbara Jean Jacket

Barbara Jacket, a pioneer in women's track and field and the head coach of the 1992 United States team for the Olympic Games, died January 6, 2022 in Richmond, Texas. She was 87. An assistant coach for the 1979 Pan American Games squad, Jacket was selected as the head coach for the U.S. women's team at the second IAAF World Championships in Rome, Italy in 1987. She also served on numerous U.S. team staffs at the junior and senior level starting in 1973. Jacket was a standout athlete at Port Arthur (Texas) Lincoln High School and attended Tuskegee Institute, where she was a thrower on the track and field team under legendary head coach Nell Jackson, the first African American female Olympic head coach. She placed sixth in the shot put and baseball throw at the 1955 AAU national championship meet and was voted her school's Most Outstanding Woman Athlete in 1958. After graduation from Tuskegee, Jacket earned a master's degree at Prairie View A&M University, where she started the women's track and field program in 1965. Over the next quarter century, her teams won 10 NAIA national titles, eight outdoors and two indoors, as well as nine Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) indoor titles and five outdoor crowns. The school also captured six league cross country titles during her tenure. Jacket earned recognition as national coach of the year five times in the NAIA and picked up 23 SWAC Coach of the Year awards. In 1990 she was named athletic director at Prairie View, the only female to hold that position in the SWAC, and she served five years at the helm of the Panther programs. Jacket retired from the school in 2010. Inducted into the Prairie View A&M Sports Hall of Fame in 1992 and the SWAC Hall of Fame in 1993, Jacket is also a member of the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. She was inducted into the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Coaches Hall of Fame in 2001. Her hometown of Port Arthur named a downtown park in her honor and the Chamber of Commerce named her as a Distinguished Citizen.