UGA Boasts Premier Coaches

Last night, the University of Georgia women's basketball team pulled out a routine win against yet another overpowered opponent. Except that this win was nothing but routine. It wasn't the 54 rebounds, 14 steals, 17 assists, or 46 point margin of victory that differentiate this game for the Lady Dogs. For head coach Andy Landers, this was win number 800. Inducted into the NCAA women's basketball's Hall of Fame in 2006, Landers is only the fifth coach in the sport to reach that mark, and took the second fewest games to do so.

That got me thinking. The University of Georgia has quite a few legdendary coaches leading its varsity sports. Just to name a few:

• Suzanne Yoculan has led the gymnastics team to nine total and four consecutive nation titles, 16 southeastern conference championships, 33 individual titles, and 57 all-american honors in twenty-five years of coaching.
• After 20 years, Manuel Diaz has three national titles to his credit as head coach of the men's tennis team to go along with 12 regular season SEC titles, and 11 consecutive year of finishing ranked in the top five in the nation.
• Under Chris Haack, the men's golf team has won two national championships and five SEC championships.
• Now the dean of SEC football coaches, Mark Richt enters his ninth season holds an 81-22 record, two SEC crowns, two SEC Coach of the Year awards, finishing every season in a bowl game and with a national ranking.
• Swimming and Diving head coach Jack Bauerle represented the United States in the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the coach of the women's swimming team.
• In only seven years, David Perno has coached the baseball squad to the NCAA college world series a total of three times, including last year when the Bulldogs finished as the second nationally ranked team.

Certainly, that list does not include all current UGA coaches, much less the great historical coaches like Vince Dooley and Dan Magill. But even these few examples give us a sense of the tremendous leadership and success that these incredible men and women have been able to impart upon a bunch of reckless college students.

Which brings me back to Coach Landers. He wasn't much more than a college kid himself when he was hired by a new athletic director by the name of Vince Dooley as the first full-time head coach of the UGA women's basketball team. That was thirty years ago. Since, he has built his program into one of the most recognizable and dominate in the sport.

And even after all that time, he shows no signs of slowing down.