Morehouse Senior Jerome Singleton Heads to Beijing as Part of the U.S. Paralympic Team JEROME SINGLETON’S Olympic dreams have become reality as the Morehouse senior will be heading to Beijing, China, September 7 to 18 as part of the United States team in the 2008 Paralympic Games. The Paralympic Games are Olympic competitions for athletes with physical disabilities, held every four years, coinciding with the Olympic Games and held in the same venue. “It’s very exciting,”he said. “I’m very thankful that I’m getting an opportunity to go.” Singleton, a triple major in math, physics and industrial engineering from Irmo, S.C., qualified for the team during the U.S. Paralympic Trials – Track and Field, in Mesa, Ariz., in June. Singleton, who wears a prosthetic lower right leg, competes in the T-44 division of the 100- and 200-meter dash, along with the 4x100-meter relay. The T-44 division is for single-leg, below the knee amputees. “I was born without my fibula, so they had to amputate my foot (while an infant),” Singleton said. “But I’ve been playing sports since I was five.” After getting to Morehouse, he was researching trends in biomedical engineering when he ran across a story about a Paralympian. He then went to www.paralympic.org. “I looked at some of the times and said, ‘I believe I can compete with these times,’” said Singleton. He joined the Morehouse track team in 2006. A roving coach who sometimes works with the track team took Singleton to a Paralympics in 2006. A year later – and after working with Morehouse track coach Willie Hill — Singleton began to enter and
win Paralympic meets. “This kid showed a lot of people about working and working hard,” Hill said. “I had no doubt this young man was going to do great things in life, on and off the track.” Of the 206 athletes on the United States team heading to the Beijing Paralympics, Singleton is one of 44 members of the U.S. track and field squad. The Paralympic Games won’t be Singleton’s first international competition. He won a gold medal in the 100-meter dash and a silver medal in the 200-meter dash during the 2008 Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, England. He won medals in the 200meter dash and 100-meter dash during the 2007 Para Pan American Games in Rio De Janiero. “Hands down, he’s the most improved athlete on our elite squad,” U.S. Paralympic Track and Field Head Coach Troy Engle said in an article on Singleton on www.usparalympics.com. “He’s gone from an emerging athlete to a contending athlete to be on the podium in Beijing.” This fall, Singleton will attend the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to begin completing the final two years of his dual-degree engineering program. But first, he will work to win a gold medal in Beijing. “I’m just going to train hard this summer,” he said. “But I’m ready to go.”
Legendary Langston Coach and Morehouse Alum “Zip” Gayles ’24 Is Sports Hall of Fame Inductee
“It is an extremely high honor for somebody to make the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame,” said the organization’s president, Lynne Draper. “(Gayles) had a fantastic career. He had a heck of a coaching record.” A strict disciplinarian, Gayles’ basketball squads won 571 games Caesar Felton “Zip” Gayles ’24 over 36 years, including a 51-game winning streak from 1944 to 1946. They won two National Negro championships and numerous Southwestern Athletic Conference titles. In 1946, Gayles’ team became the first and only college team to ever defeat the Harlem Globetrotters. The Langston University gymnasium, the Caesar “Zip” Gayles Fieldhouse, has been named after Gayles. He is also a member of the NAIA Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame. His football teams won 146 games, nine SWAC championships and two national titles. ■
CAESAR FELTON “ZIP” GAYLES ’24 was a pretty busy man of Morehouse when he attended the College. Besides working towards his degree, he was an All-American football and basketball player who also lettered in track and field. By 1930, Gayles was teaching social sciences at Oklahoma’s Langston University. But he became a sports legend, coaching football, baseball and basketball and serving as the school’s athletic director. His coaching career is why the Morehouse alum, who passed away in 1985, is being posthumously inducted to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. Gayles joins former NBA coach and executive Bob Bass, former major league baseball player Eddie Fisher and former college wrestling star Jack VanBebber as 2008 inductees. They will be honored on August 18 and will share the honor with sports luminaries such as Mickey Mantle and Jim Thorpe.
Go to http://paralympics.teamusa.org/news/article/2139 to read the full U.S. Paralympic Team profile story on Jerome Singleton.
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