UNLV’s Dennis making sure team is on track

Friday, Sept. 15, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

For the past 33 months, since she was named the head coach of the U.S. Olympic women's track team, the Olympic Dream has been more of a nightmare for UNLV track coach Karen Dennis.

"It is a bit overwhelming, particularly when you have your own program here at UNLV and you're trying to prepare for the fall semester," Dennis said as she prepared for the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

"Just trying to do your job as Olympic coach, there's a lot to be done and it has kept me very, very busy trying to keep it all together."

Until she left Las Vegas last month for an extended stay in Europe prior to traveling to Sydney, Dennis did the bulk of her "coaching" via the Internet. It wasn't until the majority of the women's team assembled in Europe last month for three international meets that Dennis finally got to do some hands-on coaching.

And despite the perception that an Olympic coach is more of a baby sitter than an instructor, Dennis said she had plenty of coaching to do to get her athletes ready for the Sydney Games.

"My biggest challenge is to ensure the success of our 4x100 and 4x400 (relay teams)," Dennis said.

"Although our athletes have their own individual coaches (such as the sensational Marion Jones, who will be gunning for an unprecedented five gold medals), they have nothing to do with our putting together the right personnel and putting them in the right order through each round in order to advance through the round and to ultimately get on the medal stand in the first position. That has been my biggest challenge."

That, and trying not to succumb to the pressure of keeping America's women's relay teams No. 1 in the world.

Although the U.S. women have won four straight gold medals in the 4x100 and two straight in the 4x400, Dennis said the rest of the world is catching up to the Americans.

"One of the biggest problems, I think, our United States team has had in the past two Olympics has been with our handoffs," Dennis said. "I have sat and looked at some film and in both '92 and '96, we were able to bring home the gold medal but it was awfully close and our handoffs weren't very good.

"As the world has caught up with our leg speed ... if we continue to have sloppy handoffs, then we're not going to have the success that we historically have had. I think our women got a wake-up call last year at the world championships when we were out of the medal count altogether."

So as soon as Dennis was named to coach the women's national team in December 1997, she said she began impressing upon her athletes the importance of working together as a team.

As soon as she got to Europe last month, she coordinated relay camps so the athletes would become accustomed to working with each other on handoffs.

"One of the first things I began to talk to them about when I was named the Olympic coach was being able to work together as a national team because that's what the other countries are doing," Dennis said.

"They are smaller countries and because they're smaller countries, they put more emphasis in working together whereas we have elite athletes who are great individual athletes but we don't have that kind of national team approach to the way that we handle our relay squads."

Because of the United States' success in the relays, Dennis said she is feeling the pressure of leading her runners to gold medals in both events.

"We are expected to bring home a gold medal -- both in the 4x100 and the 4x400, so that's really where my biggest challenge will be (next week), ensuring that success," she said.

While supervising the U.S. women's team will keep Dennis busy for the next two weeks, she admitted her attention to her team will be divided on certain occasions.

Two of Dennis' former athletes at UNLV, Alicia Tyson and Ayanna Hutchinson, have qualified for the Olympics for their native Trinidad and Tobago. This will mark the first time that the tiny West Indies island countries have sent women athletes to compete in the Olympics in track.

"It doesn't get any better than that, to have Alicia and Ayanna represent their country at the same time I'm going to be representing the United States," Dennis said. "We'll be able to share this Olympic experience together.

"They will be (the opposition) and I don't know how I'm going to handle that from the perspective of the coach of the American team. I can't visibly be out there rooting for another team, but at the same time, knowing that they're my (former athletes), I have to hope they do well."

For perhaps the first time since she accepted the position as the women's national team coach, Dennis' nervousness seemed to give way to excitement when she talked about facing Tyson and Hutchinson in Sydney.

"I think it's going to be fun when it's all over, but I haven't had any fun yet," Dennis said. "I have had some enjoyable experiences, but it has all been taxing and it has taken all my energy to do it."

Despite the logistical nightmares and the divided attention to her program at UNLV that this job has caused, Dennis called it the "greatest learning experience of my life."

And truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

"You can't be the head Olympic coach but once in your life -- and maybe that's why; maybe nobody wants to do it twice," Dennis said with a laugh. "At the same time, it has been a real huge learning experience and an enjoyable challenge for me."