How new UGA track assistant gives a boost to stars like Matthew Boling and Kyle Garland

The young Deanna Hill showed a rare mix of both talent and commitment. She would spend hours every day challenging runners older than her on the University of Central Florida track.

“I don't remember our first conversations,” said Caryl Smith Gilbert, then UCF’s head coach. “I just remember observing her at 12 or 13 [years old] always out there outworking everyone.”

As an All-American sprinter at the University of Southern California, Hill helped Smith Gilbert win her first national championship. Now, as the sprints and hurdles coach at the University of Georgia, Hill could help Smith Gilbert win her first title with the Bulldogs.

“My goal is to win championships, place in the top four every year, and graduate 100% of my athletes,” said Smith Gilbert.

The Bulldogs are entering the postseason, with the Southeastern Conference outdoor championships starting Thursday in Oxford, Miss.

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UGA’s Kyle Garland posted personal bests in the 100-meter sprint and 110-meter hurdles last weekend en route to setting a new points record for college decathletes. Almost every UGA sprinter has achieved a personal record or cut significant time in Smith Gilbert’s first year. Those around the program attribute this to the new offseason plan adopted by Hill.

“We lifted heavier than we were used to this offseason,” said junior sprinter Caleb Cavanaugh. “They loaded us up in terms of lifts and team runs, but they also gave us more rest than years [prior].”

Sprinters, because they run multiple individual events as well as relays, can score the lion’s share of a team’s points. And if her running career is any indication, Hill does not view first-place finishes and winning championships as aspirations, but rather as expectations.

“We’re focused on winning championships and, more so, developing better people than athletes,” Hill said.

Hill took her talents to Lake Highland Prep for high school, where she proceeded to have her way with the record books. She was the class 2A Florida state 100-meter dash champion two years straight, had 11 first-place finishes in her senior season, and set the 100-, 200- and 400-meter dash records at Lake Highland. To this day, those records have yet to fall.

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Hill held herself to a high standard in the classroom as well. She earned President’s List and National Honors Society recognition, citing math and science as her strong suits.

“I was able to start seeing the correlations on the track from what we learned in class in seeing how the muscles worked together,” Hill said.

Smith Gilbert took the head coaching job at USC in 2014. Hill followed her there for her college running career, earning multiple All-American honors and winning a team national title in 2018. She holds the third- and second-fastest times in school history for the 100 and 200, respectively.

Coaching was not the career choice for the human biology major at the time, but it might have always been the calling.

“Even when I was running, I didn’t want to coach. I wanted to go medical school,” Hill said.

Those around her saw otherwise.

“She always wanted to stay and help coach her teammates after her training,” Smith Gilbert said, “and I would make her leave and go study.”

Hill was studying for the MCAT in 2019 when she got a call about a head coaching vacancy at Lake Highland Prep. She took the job and stayed in contact with Smith Gilbert, calling her if she had questions or was simply excited for her team.

When Smith Gilbert moved to Athens last year and had to fill her UGA coaching staff, there was one person at the top of the call list.

“I needed someone I trusted and could groom, like an apprentice coach,” Smith Gilbert said.

Hill’s offseason plan took a “high quality, low quantity” approach to lifting and conditioning: The athletes lifted heavier weights than a lot of them were accustomed to and did so fewer times per week. The team trained with higher intensity and reps but got more rest and recovery.

Runners got stronger and bought into a detail-oriented accountability system.

“She is a very intuitive coach. Little details like hitches in form do not get past her,” Smith Gilbert said.

Though it was an adjustment, athletes such as Cavanaugh bought in immediately. Cavanaugh trusted the new regimen and is seeing results. He won his first conference title in the 4x400-meter relay this past indoor season.

“It's the personal things outside of the track that they care about,” Cavanaugh said of Smith Gilbert and Hill. ”Being one minute late to a meeting, not eating right when no one is watching – those things that in college no one would say anything, they matter, come spring.”

These mental adjustments supersede results and times, Hill said. Because when accountability takes place from the ground-up as opposed to the top-down, she added, winning becomes a byproduct of committing to one another and success becomes a habit.

She is trying to light the same “outworking everyone” fire under UGA’s athletes that burned inside that 12-year-old girl.

— Brandon Bryant is a student in UGA’s Carmical Sports Media Institute.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: UGA track coach Deanna Hill helps Matthew Boling and Kyle Garland