By DAVID CLAYBOURN
Herald-Banner Staff
COMMERCE
June 19, 2007 01:13 am
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Former Paris High School and University of Texas basketball standout Carlton Cooper will officially be named today as the new athletic director at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
A&M-Commerce President Dr. Keith McFarland has called a press conference for 11 a.m. to announce the hiring of Cooper, who has worked for the last nine years at Southern Methodist University.
Cooper’s extraordinary leaping skills made him a crowd-pleasing dunker for the Paris Wildcats’ basketball team from 1979-81 and then at Texas from 1981-85. The Dallas Mavericks selected Cooper in the sixth round of the 1985 NBA draft.
Cooper stayed on at UT as a graduate assistant coach in basketball from 1985-87 and then was a professional basketball player and coach in the Netherlands, the Philippines and in New Zealand from 1986-94.
He returned to his hometown to serve as head basketball coach and assistant principal at Paris from 1994-96. He was recently added to the Wall of Fame at the Boys and Girls Club of the Red River Valley.
Cooper was also head coach and general manager of the Arlington Texans in the Southwest Professional Basketball League from 1997-2000 and then joined SMU’s administration in 1998, first serving as community relations director and since 2000 has been SMU’s senior associate athletic director for internal operations.
Cooper was involved in the supervision of 14 sports at SMU, plus oversaw equipment, strength and conditioning, training room and video operations.
He was also championship director for Conference USA and has served on multiple committees for the university, Conference USA, the Western Athletic Conference and the NCAA.
Cooper will oversee 11 intercollegiate sports at A&M-Commerce, which is a member of the Lone Star Conference in NCAA Division II. He is succeeding Jim Johnson as athletic director of the Lions after Johnson left to become the commissioner of the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association.
“We really appreciated his enthusiasm and energy at SMU,” said Jim Copeland, former SMU athletic director. “He did a little bit of everything for us. I think he will suit Texas A&M-Commerce well.”
“Carlton is a great guy that will do a terrific job of bringing the athletic department together along with creating a vision of success,” said SMU basketball coach Matt Doherty.
“We are very excited for Carlton Cooper as he realizes his dream and becomes the new athletic director for Texas A&M-Commerce,” said SMU soccer coach Schellas Hyndman. “Carlton played a very important role in the success of SMU soccer, having reached the College Cup final four twice under his leadership. In addition, we hosted two soccer College Cups while Carlton was here at SMU. He’s been a great friend to SMU soccer and will be missed.”
Cooper founded the National Youth Sports program for SMU, developed the curriculum for the SMU PIKE Big Brother Program, designed a reading program for fourth grade students in Dallas and created the SMU-Martin Luther King Center “Road to the Pros” career lecture series that featured national sports, education and business leaders.
He’s a board member of the Dallas All-Sports Association as well as a member of the Longhorn Hall of Honor, SMU Ex-Student Association (received his master’s from SMU) and the University of Texas Ex-Student Association. He’s been involved in the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce, the greater Dallas Asian and Hispanic chambers of commerce and the University of Texas Longhorn Foundation.
--Texas A&M University-Commerce’s sports information office contributed to this report.
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