The voice of USF Athletics, Jim Louk, will routinely put down his radio headset and pick up the pen to share his perspective on the history of USF Athletics.

Louk has been broadcasting games for 27 years and is the resident historian in the Athletics Department hallways so this week he talks to Hall of Fame inductee Ross Gload.

A Visit with Kerine Black

Athlete of the Year

There may be no USF athlete who has dominated a sport the way Kerine Black dominated track and field for the Bulls.

Her remarkable story begins with a clear example of her persistence and drive. Unrecruited and not planning to compete at USF, she came to Tampa from her native Jamaica, expecting to focus solely on her studies.

Then she picked up an Oracle, and the USF track and field program was on the way to being transformed.

“I saw the USF record for the triple jump,” Black recalls. “I saw that the record was what I jumped in high school. So, I said let me walk out there and see what the team is about.”

Member of the C-USA All-Decade Team

Black was far from the first USF student to walk up to a head coach and say, “I can do better than what you've got.” Even with her skills, it took her awhile to talk her way on to the team.

Former coach Greg Thiel remembers Black coming to practice and offering to try out.

“We have people do that all the time and I really didn't pay that much attention to her, but she was pretty persistent. She came out the next day and jumped and was better than anyone we had at the time.”

From that moment, there was no looking back.

In her career, she won nine conference championships in six events. She was a member of the Conference USA All Decade team for the 1990's. She was the Conference USA athlete of the year three times. She was an All-American five times in three events.

To this day, nine of her USF records remain intact.

Unlike most elite athletes, Black was not enthusiastic about practice. “I resented practice,” she laughs. “That Florida sun is hot. Whatever I could do to get out of it I did.”

All-American five times in three events

With or without practice, Black was such a fierce competitor that she always responded when the pressure was on.

“In terms of performing, when she stepped on the track and the gun went off you could tell from the first time you saw her that she was a competitor,” says former teammate Kemel Thompson.

“She was not a practice player. What was amazing about Kerine was that when the lights came on, she did things that surprised you because you weren't sure she was prepared to compete at that level,” says Thiel.

Her induction marks the first entry of a track and field athlete in to the USF Hall of Fame and caps a remarkable rise from walk on to the highest honor of athletic excellence at USF.

Kerine Black will be inducted in to the second class of the USF Hall of Fame on Friday, with Dan Holcomb, Sherry Bedingfield, Ross Gload, and Joe Lewkowicz.

GO BULLS!