Athletics Hall of Famer Quarles to serve as Team USA coach in Paris after speaking at Liberty tonight

Delethea Quarles (’90), a two-time All-American heptathlete for Liberty University’s track & field team who was inducted into Liberty’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 2014, will make her first Olympic appearance as a Team USA coach at the Summer Games in early August in Paris.

“I never thought about it or planned it or ever dreamt it could happen,” Quarles said of coaching at the Olympic level. “It’s kind of amazing. I made efforts to go to the next level after college as an athlete and was always chasing the dream of making the Olympic team.”

Those dreams never materialized, but she shifted her passion to coaching, inspired by her coach, 77-time collegiate conference coach of the year Brant Tolsma who retired after 34 years as men’s and women’s cross country and indoor and outdoor track & field head coach in 2020. Quarles was selected as a coach for the 2024 Summer Games after working with Team USA in four previous IAFF World Championships in South Korea, Russia, Qatar, and China, where she served as the women’s head track & field coach for Team USA in 2015.

“The Olympic Games are the highest you can go, so it is a dream come true, one that doesn’t seem real,” Quarles said. “I do feel very prepared from all the championships I’ve been to with Team USA.”

First, she will return to her alma mater to serve as the Olympic Speaker for the 35th annual Virginia Commonwealth Games during Friday’s Opening Ceremonies in the Liberty Football Indoor Practice Facility. Those ceremonies will follow the 5:30 p.m. parade of thousands of amateur athletes on campus for Main Games Weekend, when Liberty will host baseball, basketball, softball, tennis, and track & field events in various facilities.

Quarles, a native of Covington, Va., was recruited to Campbell (N.C.) University by Tolsma, who saw in her the potential to be a heptathlete based on her high school career in which she excelled in various events, including many of the seven required in the competition: 100-meter hurdles, 200- and 800-meter runs, high jump, shot put, long jump, and javelin.

“I didn’t know what a heptathlon was coming out of high school,” said Quarles, who became an All-American for the Camels as a freshman before transferring with Tolsma to Liberty in 1985. After serving as an assistant coach at Liberty from 1990-97, Quarles spent 25 years as an associate head coach at the University of South Carolina from 1997-2022.

She helped the Gamecocks to their first NCAA Division I national championship in any sport in 2002 and coached a total of 50 All-American athletes at USC before becoming James Madison University’s director for track and field and cross country.

Quarles credits Tolsma and Liberty, where she received her B.S. in Psychology, for instilling in her the confidence she needs to train some of the top female heptathletes and jumpers in the world.

“My years as a collegiate athlete under Coach Tolsma developed me as the heptathlete I became, and then being hired on staff to coach alongside him helped me learn how to develop my athletes and how to build a winning culture,” she said. “I had quite a few opportunities to leave Liberty earlier than I did, but my faith was really important to me, and I loved the environment there and the teaching and the ability to be free with my faith.”

She considers Tolsma, founding Lady Flames Track & Field Head Coach Ron Hopkins, and Jake Matthes, the longtime Flames head coach who died in April, three of her greatest mentors in the sport.

“(Tolsma) is a man of God and a coach that had integrity that he never compromised,” she said. “(Matthes) was influential as well and l had a great relationship with him, and up until the last few years I saw him, he was always a joy to be around and very inspiring.”

She hopes to serve as an inspiration to the younger athletes that she addresses tonight with her experiences as an athlete and a coach, especially as she gears up for the greatest coaching opportunity of her career in Paris.

“I feel with my beginnings of coming from a small town, and a university from a conference that was not considered Power 5 or a major university at the time, if you work hard and take advantage of your opportunities and allow God to have the people of His choosing around you, you can have special things happen for you and reach the ultimate goals in your career,” Quarles said. “I want it to be a message that it can happen to them as well, that they can reach some special places and find themselves at the top of their chosen career paths.”