Track Coach to Retire After 26 Seasons at Helm

After 26 seasons as head coach of the Rice women’s track and field team, Victor Lopez will hang up his whistle at the end of the 2005 outdoor season.

Lopez has led the Owls to four Western Athletic Conference outdoor titles, three WAC indoor championships, one Southwest Conference indoor title, and two WAC cross-country titles. His teams have performed well in the classroom, too. The graduation rate of the women’s track athletes who enter Rice and then complete their eligibility has been 100 percent during Lopez’s tenure.

“Coaching at Rice University has been the best experience of my life,” he says. “It will always be in my mind and my heart that I came to a great place. I was blessed to be able to work at this institution.”

While at Rice, Lopez won seven WAC Coach-of-the-Year honors as well as three Southwest Conference awards. He also has been named coach of the year twice for NCAA District IV. But Lopez’s success extends beyond collegiate circles and even outside the United States. A Puerto Rican native, he was appointed national coordinator of that country’s 1992 national Olympic team after also working with the team in ’84 and ’88. His most recent international coaching experience came at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, where he served as head coach of the Puerto Rican track and field staff.

Lopez, who was elected president of the Central American and Caribbean Confederation, the body that governs track and field in 35 countries in that region, plans to return to Puerto Rico to work as a consultant for the International Association of Athletics Federations. He also will advise the Puerto Rico Olympic Committee and the department of sport in development and coaching education.
He says he will most miss working with the student–athletes, who he describes as “the most diverse group at Rice University, with girls coming together from all backgrounds, countries, and ethnic groups.”