Jan. 12, 2009
ARLINGTON, Tx. - UTA track and field head coach John Sauerhage announced today that he has named three-time Olympian Dennis Darling as an assistant coach for the men's and women's teams.
Darling, a native of Nassau, Bahamas, comes to UTA from UT-Pan American where he spent the 2007-08 season as the head coach of the school's men's and women's track and field and cross country programs. Darling was an assistant coach for the team's in 2006-07.
As the team's head coach, Darling coached All-American high jumper Will Littleton. Littleton was also named UTPA's Male Athlete of the Year. He also coached two regional qualifiers.
As an assistant coach, Darling helped with the sprinters where at the UH/RunSport All-Comers meet his athletes broke 23 UTPA records.
Darling's athletes were also standouts in the classroom as he had 16 members from both the men and women's track and field and cross country programs register 3.0 grade point averages and one athlete make a 4.0 in both the fall and spring semesters.
A world-class athlete, Darling was a member of the 4x400 relay squad that represented the Bahamas and qualified for the finals in the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympics.
He began his Olympic career at the 1996 Atlanta Olympiad, where he was part of a Bahamas relay squad that finished fifth overall. At the 2000 Sydney games, his relay team finished fourth. He was a team captain at the 2004 games in Athens and his relay team finished sixth.
Darling became the second freshman - joining Carl Lewis - in the history of the University of Houston track and field program to be selected to the Olympic team during his freshman season when he appeared in the Atlanta Games.
Darling earned a bronze medal at the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Championships in 2003 with a time of 3:00.53 in the 4x400-meter relay in Paris. He was also a part of a 4x400-meter relay squad that reached the finals at the 1999 IAAF World Championships in Seville, Spain.
A four-time participant at the IAAF World Championships, Darling competed in the men's 400-meter race in Athens, and competed with the 4x400-meter relay squad at the 1995 IAAF World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Darling was a standout for the University of Houston track and field program where he captured 12 Conference USA individual titles and won his first NCAA National Championship in the 400-meter dash with a time of 46.65 in 1998. During his career with the Cougars, Darling captured three titles in the 200-meter, 400-meter dashes and the 4x400-meter relay.
During his senior campaign, Darling was selected as the Conference USA Indoor Men's Athlete of the Year for the second time in his career after receiving the same award during his junior season. Darling was a four-time All-American with the Cougars and captured All-American honors in both indoor and outdoor competition during his freshman campaign.
While at Houston, Darling was selected as the Mentor of the Year by the EXCEL Program, which matched up incoming freshmen with senior mentors during the academic year.
Darling is married to fellow Bahamian sprinter Tonique Williams-Darling, who captured the gold medal in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. His wife became the first athlete from the Bahamas to win a gold medal in Olympic competition.
His brother, Devard, is a wide receiver with the Kansas City Chiefs and has spent the last five seasons in the NFL. Darling's cousin, Frank Rutherford, became the first athlete from the Bahamas to win an Olympic medal where he received the bronze medal in the triple jump at the 1992 Olympics.
