Coach Gary enters her first season with Purdue with an impressive array of credentials. As a high school coach in Cleveland, Ohio, her teams won eight state championships under her guidence, including five in the past six seasons. Gary comes to Purdue from Beaumont School for Girls, where she had been the co-head track and field and assistant cross-country coach since 1995. She also taught health and physical education in the Cleveland Public School System.
Prior to coaching at Beaumont, Gary taught and was the head track coach from 1970-95 at John Adams High School in Cleveland.
Gary's coaching experience includes participating as a staff member on three international U.S. Junior teams. In 1995 she accompanied the Women?s Junior National team to Chile and was on the coaching staff for the North Olympic Festival team at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. She was also the assistant team manager for the 1998 World Junior National team in Annecy, France.
Coach Gary has coached a number of athletes onto sucessful collegiate careers, including Carmen Banks and Candace Nicholson. Under Gary's guidence Banks was the top ranked junior runner in the nation in the 300m low hurldes and second in the 100m hurdles in 1994. Banks went on to run for the 1994 U.S. Junior National team and perennial national power Texas. Nicholson, who finished fourth in the 800m at the 1999 Big Ten Indoor Championships and sixth at the outdoor championships for Illinois, excelled under Gary. Nicholson was the third ranked junior half-miler and was a member of the U.S. Junior Pan American team that went to Cuba in 1996.
Gary is a certified USATF level I and II instructor and has taught coaching clinics in the sprints and hurdles all over the country.