Renowned track coach Dick Booth to join Florida's staff

Renowned field-events coach Dick Booth, who has spent the past 27 years helping to build Arkansas into a national power, has been named assistant track and field coach at the University of Florida. 

Booth will be responsible for coaching the jumps and assisting with recruiting and other key phases of the program, UF head coach Mike Holloway said.

Booth spent 27 seasons as the men’s field-events coach at Arkansas and also has served as the head coach at Louisiana-Lafayette. Every Arkansas school record-holder in the men’s field events was either coached or recruited by Booth.

“We are extremely excited to hire a coach of Dick’s caliber,” Holloway said. “We look forward to him joining our program and helping us continue towards our goal of becoming the best team in the country.”

During his four-year tenure as head coach at Louisiana-Lafayette from 1985-88, Booth was responsible for two individual national championships, five All-Americans and 19 school record-holders.

During his time at Arkansas, Booth was responsible for 45 individual national championships and 137 All-America honors. Additionally, he coached 11 Olympians.

The jumpers he’s worked with include: Mike Conley, Erick Walder, Robert Howard, Edrick Floreal, Brian Wellman, Jerome Romain, Ray Doakes, Matt Hemingway, Melvin Lister and Kenny Evans.

Comments

[Steve]

I had Coach Booth as a Biology teacher in Wellington Ks 1971. Pretty tough teacher, no nonsense. Looked alot like Elvis with the Black slick hair, arms as big as most of us seniors legs...glad he is still on the move, great leader and teacher.