The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Garnham joins Track and Field staff as assistant coach
06.29.2020 | Track & Field / Cross Country
Jim Garnham will coach vertical jumps and combined events at Texas.
AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Track and Field program has added Jim Garnham as its newest assistant coach, head coach Edrick Floréal announced Monday. Garnham, who spent the last two seasons at Purdue after a decade of success at Notre Dame, will coach the vertical jumps and combined events.
"Coach Garnham will be an excellent addition to our staff and I'm excited for him to join our family here at The University of Texas," Floréal said. "He has a tremendous record of developing All-Americans, conference champions and record-breaking performers everywhere he has been. I'm excited to watch him develop, educate and grow our student-athletes into leaders."
During his two seasons at Purdue, Garnham, the 2019 USTFCCCA Great Lakes Region Men's Assistant Coach of the Year, coached a pair of All-Americans in Isaiah Martin (men's heptathlon/decathlon) and Janae Moffitt (women's high jump). Moffitt cleared a season-best 1.82m/5-11.5 en route to winning the Big Ten high jump title and finishing with the sixth-best mark nationally in 2020. Martin scored 5,631 points in the heptathlon, finished third at the Big Ten Championships and ranked No. 15 nationally to earn All-America honors indoors. He also was an All-American in the decathlon at the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Championships.
"I'm really excited to be joining Coach Floréal's staff here at Texas," Garnham said. "There's no school in the country that's like UT. It's the cream of the crop and it's where you want to be for Track and Field. I'm looking forward to working with our student-athletes, building relationships with them and helping them continue to grow in the sport."
While at Notre Dame, Garnham mentored 14 All-Americans, 18. NCAA qualifiers, 61 NCAA Regional qualifiers, 17 conference champions, nine school-record performers and one Capital One Academic All-America honoree.
His standout pupils in South Bend include Nate Richartz, Matthew Birzer and Carly Loefell, who all earned All-America status under his tutelage. Richartz was a five-time All-America and three-time conference champion in the men's pole vault, setting the Fighting Irish's school record and tying the ACC record with a clearance of 5.70m/18-8.5 at the outdoor conference meet in 2018. Birzer earned a pair of All-America honors in the men's high jump, including a second-team honor outdoors in 2018, while Loefell posted the highest women's heptathlon score in Notre Dame History (5,594) and earned All-America honors at the 2013 NCAA Championships
Prior to his time at Notre Dame, Garnham spent three seasons at the University of Tulsa, where he mentored an NCAA qualifier in the shot put, a USATF indoor shot put qualifier, 17 NCAA Regional qualifiers, four Conference USA championships and 20 All-C-USA student-athletes. In just three seasons at TU, his student-athletes produced a combined 18 program records for the Golden Hurricane.
Garnham's coaching career began as an assistant at the University of Buffalo, where he spent five seasons supervising multi-event athletes, javelin throwers and hurdlers. He coached a USATF indoor heptathlon qualifier, a Canadian Olympic trials qualifier in the women's heptathlon, two NCAA qualifiers, four NCAA East Regional qualifiers and five Mid-American Conference champions.
Garnham earned his bachelor's degree in history from Kent State in 1998 and will be joined in Austin by his wife, Kelly.