Sit in the gymnasium at Prairie View A&M and look up, and you'll find two decades' worth of women's track and field championship banners hanging from the rafters — 18 national championships, 23 Southwestern Athletic Conference championships, 57 All-Americans and five Olympic contenders.
Prairie View A&M women's track & field was the house that Barbara Jacket built. Jacket started the program from the ground up in 1966 and coached the Lady Panthers for 25 years. She served as an assistant coach for the U.S. women’s national track team at the 1979 Pan American games, was named Prairie View’s athletic director in 1990, and led the U.S. Olympic team in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
Jacket died in 2022, but her championship legacy has landed her a spot in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame's 2024 induction class.
“Even though she talked about it, it’s not her first conversation,” said Carlotta Allen, Jacket’s niece. “Her first conversation for me is, ‘Be successful, go to college, be a good citizen, help people, finish your journey, finish your course, don’t quit.’ Those kinds of things are what she spoke to me the most. She was not one, and these are her own words, she didn’t like to toot her own horn. You’re not going to find her rolling out her portfolio.”
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Jacket understood what a good a coach could do for and athlete. She experienced it herself growing up in Port Arthur. Living a humble life as one of the three children to a single mother, Jacket found mentorship in Lincoln High School counselor and track coach Mrs. AP Guidry.
According to Carlotta and her husband Lawrence Allen Jr., Mrs. Guidry was Jacket’s advocate. She pushed Jacket into playing sports and improving her grades in order to make it into college at Tuskegee University. There she was coached by Dr. Nell Jackson, the first African-American woman to be named U.S. Olympic head coach for the women’s track team. Jacket would later become the second.
And Jacket always continued to credit Guidry with setting her on the path of her life.
“She recognized the impact that a coach could make on somebody’s life,” Lawrence said. “As an educator, she credits that as her true calling and love because of her desire to make an impact. But the reason I think coaching stood out so much for her is because she knew firsthand what a coach had done in her life.”
Jacket became the SWAC’s only female athletic director in 1990 and worked to make conditions more favorable for Prairie View's female athletes and endorsing Title IX. According to Carlotta, Jacket didn’t take a salary increase with her new title. She didn’t even get paid for coaching.
Jacket only wanted to be paid for teaching and the only recognition she asked for was to have the pool named after her. Having started her career as Prairie View’s swim teacher, she spent the summers giving free swim lessons to children of the community.
“If she’s known for anything in the community, it's as that swim teacher who taught little Black kids who had this phobia about swimming how to swim,” Carlotta said. “And that meant everything to her. She said,’ If I could have anything in my name, I would like to have that pool named the ‘Barbara Jacket Pool.’ That meant a heck of a lot to her.”
In 1992, Jacket would take her relentless, no-nonsense coaching skills to the international stage as the second Black woman to be named head coach of the U.S. Olympic team. Lawrence noted that Jacket felt enormous pressure to succeed, especially given her background.
“Her biggest thing was, being a Black woman, that she had to be successful, or they would say she failed,” Lawrence said. “That the reason the athletes were not successful was that they hired a Black woman. So, she was under tremendous pressure that she put upon herself to do well during the Olympic period.”
As the Olympic coach, Jacket made changes to the way the team trained, especially for the relays. She instituted technical practices and while the athletes could still train with their individual coaches for individual events, she insisted they come together to train for team events.
“I think that’s what she was most respected for is because she assisted with all of these coaches who thought they knew better than she did on what would be the methodology for success,” Lawrence said. “And that’s training together and not in separate places with your own individual coach unless you were working on your individual event.
"And so, all of those where they really got the most medals and points really came in the relays and they credit her for having them do the work on the technical aspects of the relay before the events. So, she was a stickler for things, and she was not going to bend.”
The 1992 team, which included the likes of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Gwen Torrance, Gail Devers and Evelyn Ashford, returned with four gold medals, three silver and three bronze, which at the time was the most hardware the women’s Olympic track team had garnered since 1956.
But the championship that meant to her the most was always the first championship the Prairie View Lady Panthers brought home.
“No one can recognize the impact of saying, ‘I’m standing in Prairie View and there’s nothing here. And I’m saying there should be something here for the young ladies to participate in athletics and I’m going to go ask if it’s okay if we can start a track team,'" Lawrence said. "And (the administration) said, ‘You can start one, but we have no money for you, we have no uniforms for you, we have nothing for you.’ And in a span of five years, you’re holding up a national championship banner.”
A few weeks ago, Carlotta and Lawrence attended the inauguration of the Prairie View A&M’s new president and Carlotta found herself taking in those banners in a different light.
“I’m 57, I’ve been in that gym 57-plus times, but something about that moment when I was kind of just able to just kind of take a look,” Carlotta said. “I took one glance, and I realized it was my aunt that caused these accolades to surround this entire gym, I was overwhelmed. I was brought to tears.”
For Carlotta and Lawrence, Jacket was not just a legendary coach. She was like a second mother. She played a role in bringing them together in a roundabout way, facilitating the circumstances that brought them into each other's space. In the final years of her life, Jacket was cared for by the two of them and she became Lawrence's family just as much as she was Carlotta's.
“She was my teacher as well as my wife’s aunt,” Lawrence said. “She had a massive impact on me just like she had on all the students that attended the school because she was just a light that you didn’t miss. If you went to Prairie View, everybody knew who Coach Jacket was. Even if she didn’t know you, you knew her. She didn’t facilitate the introduction, but she certainly orchestrated the life that we both lived. … I just happened to be fortunate enough to be in the same space at the same time.”
Jacket’s induction into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame means something more now than ever. Though Jacket never married or had children, she was the matriarch in a way. Carlotta noted that the family she left behind has a new appreciation for everything she did and the ways she carried them.
“What’s paramount to me that she’s receiving this award at this dispensation in time is that she has a host of nieces and nephews, great and great-great, that have an opportunity to really witness how great she really was,” Carlotta said. “I’m just thankful to be able to see even after she has transitioned to the best life, her legacy and the great things that she has done for so many people is still being appreciated by a new generation of people.”