NORFOLK, Va. – Former Norfolk State University coaches James and LaVerne Sweat were recently named as members of the six-person 2013 induction class into the Hampton Roads Sports Hall of Fame.
The Sweats will be inducted at a banquet on Tuesday, Oct. 22 at the Norfolk Scope Arena. Admission is $65 per person, or $400 for a table of eight. Reservations can be made by calling (757) 622-2222, ext. 101.
James Sweat spent 19 seasons at Norfolk State and 26 overall as a college women's basketball head coach before he retired at the end of the 2006-07 season. He compiled a record of 346-218 leading the Spartans, and a 529-262 record overall. Sweat's teams at NSU won five CIAA Tournament titles and made five NCAA Division II South Atlantic Regional appearances. His 1990-91 team won a school-record 33 games and advanced all the way to the NCAA Division II Final Four.
Sweat also coached the Spartans to their first and only MEAC women's basketball championship and NCAA Division I Tournament appearance to date, in 2002. At NSU, he was CIAA Tournament Most Outstanding Coach five times, MEAC Tournament Most Outstanding Coach once, and was the 1991 NCAA Division II Coach of the Year.
Prior to NSU, Sweat compiled a 183-44 record in seven seasons at Hampton University, where he guided the Lady Pirates to the 1988 Division II national championship. Sweat is already a member of the Hampton Roads African American Sports Hall of Fame (2009 inductee).
James' wife, LaVerne, had an equally decorated career as a track and field coach and administrator. She was NSU's women's track and field coach from 1988-2005 and retired as the school's senior woman administrator following the 2005-06 school year.
As the Spartans' coach, her teams won a total 18 CIAA championships between cross country and track and field in an eight-year span from 1988-96. The Spartans earned four runner-up finishes at the NCAA Division II Track and Field Championships in her tenure.
Under Sweat's guidance, the Spartans won two more conference titles after moving up to NCAA Division I, capturing the 2000 MEAC indoor championship and 2001 outdoor championship.
Sweat was the first female president of the CIAA in the 1980s. Among her other notable accomplishments in track and field was being selected as an assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic team for the 2000 Sydney Games.
Sweat, who was also the head coach at Hampton University from 1978-88, earned the CIAA Track and Field Coach of the Year nine times combined during her stints at the two schools. She was the NAIA National Coach of the Year in 1981 while at Hampton and was voted NCAA Division II Coach of the Decade in 1991. She was a 2011 inductee into the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Hall of Fame and a 2007 Hampton Roads African American Sports Hall of Fame inductee.
Other 2013 HRSHOF inductees include former ODU baseball coach Bud Metheny (posthumous), former ODU basketball player Leon Anthony, area high school basketball coach Jack Baker and National Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman.
