MOBILE, Ala. - South Alabama cross country/track and field head coach Lee Evans announced Wednesday afternoon, the re-hiring of his former coach Stan Dowell. Dowell will replace Ron Davis, who was hired by Ohio State on Sept. 1. The Williams, Calif. native will work primarily with the men’s and women’s sprinters.
“We are very excited to have Stan back,” Evans said, “With the excellent core of 400m runners we have here, I am very enthusiastic knowing what Stan can do for them.”
Dowell returns to his position of assistant coach of the cross country/track and field programs that he held from 2002-03. Prior to his first stint as a Jaguar, Dowell was the sprint coach for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1995-97. The Saudi national team set six new records in the sprint events and ran all-time bests in the 4x100m and 4x400m relays.
“I am very happy to be working with Lee again,” Dowell said, “I am anxious to see what these athletes can do with the system I used to get Lee where he was. I think there are several athletes here that can be at that level Lee was when I coached him.”
In 1987, Dowell was named California High School Track Coach of the Year and the Region 8 National High School of the Year.
Among his most notable athletes are Olympic Gold Medalists Andre Phillips (400m hurdles, 1988), Alice Brown (4x400m relay, 1988), two-time Gold Medalist Evans (400m, 4x400m relay) and 1996 Bronze Medalist Falyot Okunoya of Nigeria (women’s 400m).
Phillips set a then-Olympic record of 47.19 for 400m hurdles at the 1988 Seoul Games. The UCLA standout won the 1981 NCAA Championships in the same event under Dowell.
Evans had, arguably, his greatest year under Dowell. In 1968, the California native broke the world record in the 400m at the Olympics and later anchored 4x400m relay to a world best. Evans’ time of 43.86 was the first-ever sub-44 second jaunt around the track and stood as the all-time mark for 20 years, until Butch Reynolds ran 43.29 in Zurich in August of 1988.
With a solid mix of U.S. and international athletes, Dowell should quickly improve a sprint group that scored just 10 total points on the men’s side at the 2006 Indoor and Outdoor Sun Belt Conference Championships. The hurdlers, led by Christophe DuMee’s fourth place finishes in the 110 hurdles and 400m hurdles, will also benefit from Dowell’s Olympic-level experience. DuMee, a native of the island-nation of Mauritius, was fifth in the sprint-hurdles at the African Championships in August.
The women’s sprinters scored 25 points at the outdoor finale led by NCAA finalist Ajoke Odumosu, who won the 400m/400m hurdle double for the second time in her career. Like DuMee, Odumosu, competed for her home-country over the summer, taking fifth in the 400m hurdles representing Nigeria at this year’s World Juniors in Beijing.
