Desegregation: A Coach’s Take

Wayne Norton all but stands alone at the moment.

In this sense, Georgia's head track and field coach shares common ground with those who walked before him on the University campus 50 years prior. When Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes strode onto the campus as the first black students at Georgia, they stood out, a minority in a numbers game stacked against them.

Times have changed, but there is still a numbers game being played in collegiate athletics — one in which Norton finds himself in to this day.

Norton is the only black head coach, and one of only two minority head coaches, at the University of Georgia. In athletics, where minority athletes often outnumber white athletes in any sports, the issue of hiring black coaches has become a national issue in sports, one in which Georgia is not exempt.

But the discrepancy in numbers at the University can be deceiving.

"I think this is an issue that sometimes the actual results aren't always reflective of the effort and the attitude behind it. And so I think that the university has done a really good job … in attacking the issues and the problems," Norton said. "I think the effort and all we've been trying to do has been pretty good. But again, looking at it, sometimes you might not see all the results."

The University has provided its share of results in recent years, especially for a school in the Southeastern Conference — a conference historically known for racial biases against minority coaches and even players.

Although it took until 1995, Georgia hired its first black head coach in Tubby Smith, who took over the men's basketball team. Since then, coaches such as Norton and former head men's basketball coach Dennis Felton have been handed the reins of a Bulldogs' athletic team.

In 2004, Georgia also hired Damon Evans as the first black athletic director in the SEC.

For a school in the SEC, hiring three black head coaches in the span of nine years — from Smith in 1995 to Felton in 2003 — is a definite start.

And for Norton, he believes the numbers game will continue to trend in a positive direction thanks to a concerted effort by the Athletic Association.

"I think they've got a lot of programs in place that I would say are working towards an improved situation," Norton said. "Hopefully it will continue and not be reversed."

When athletic director Greg McGarity took over the athletic program in 2010, he made it clear that race would not factor into any hires he made for the Georgia athletic program. And while his first hire — volleyball coach Lizzy Stemke — is white, the expectation is that the Athletic Association will continue striving to push to find the best candidate.

“I think we’ll be very aggressive on all our searches. We want to hire the best person we can,” McGarity said in a September interview. “We expect there to be a diverse pool. That’ll be an expectation, and pretty much we’ll let the chips fall where they may after that … I would say I’m pretty colorblind.”

Norton may stand alone in terms of race for the University's coaches, but the past 50 years have still made quite a difference in his eyes. And for Georgia's lone black coach, as long as the effort remains in place to consider minority candidates, then the numbers game is nothing more than a statistic.

"When you look at the reality, the reality of the situation is a lot better than the perceptions are," Norton said.