Akers excelling as track coach
Do great players make great coaches?
This is a question sports fans have been asking themselves for many years.
Many people believe Phil Jackson would not be the coach he is today without Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
Others believe Jackson helped these players reach their full potential.
For a professional coach, it is easier to debate this topic because they have these players given to them. For a college coach, it is not so simple.
College coaches must recruit players and persuade them to come to their school. Recruiting is not an easy task while coaching at a school like Eastern.
Track and field head coach Tom Akers has accomplished the goal of recruiting some of the best talent around and helping them meet their full potential.
Akers has shown this by winning 10 of the last 12 Indoor Ohio Valley Conference Championships.
Akers not only brings in great talent, he also hires successful coaches who push the athletes to be OVC contenders annually.
In 2007, Akers brought in Olympic contender JaRod Tobler to coach the long jump. Tobler had four successful seasons at Eastern and is now training in California to be in the 2012 Olympics.
Two seasons ago, assistant coach Jessica Sommerfeld joined the staff and is now the throws coach. Sommerfeld had many accomplishments when coaching at South Dakota State and TCU.
She also competed in shot put at Rice University where she was the Western Athletic Conference’s champion in that event.
When Sommerfeld heard of an assistant coach opening at Eastern, she could not help but jump at the opportunity. She said Akers and the perspective position were major contributors to why she came to Eastern.
“Coach Akers has a great tradition of track and field,” Sommerfeld said. “The facilities are great and the education here is great. When you have all that, why wouldn’t you want to come?”
With only two coaches on the staff now and two volunteer coaches to help along, both Akers and Sommerfeld will have their hands full while they try to continue the program’s winning tradition.
“It’s obviously a position we don’t want to be in, but it’s a situation were in,” Akers said.
“So like we told the team the other day, there’s no use complaining about it. We just have to set our minds to the task at hand. We just have to get the job done. We are going to work together to accomplish the goals that we set at the beginning of the season and there’s no reason why we can’t accomplish them.”
Akers said he would like to finish his career at Eastern.
“This is an enjoyable place to be and I take a lot of pride in what I’m doing,” he said.
If he stays, this great coach will continue to develop great players.
Bob Shaughnessy can be reached
