UT had competed in track and field through the Sports Club program since 1969, when Vice Chancellor Howard Aldmon announced in August 1973 that women’s athletics would become an institutional program coordinated through the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation’s Women’s Physical Education Department. The first coach in the institutional framework was Terry Hull Crawford, instructor in the PE Department. When the Women’s Athletics Department was established in 1976, track and field was one of the seven sports in which competition was offered, and Terry Crawford made the transition with the team. In 1980 she coached her track team to the national title in the AIAW, Tennessee’s first women’s national championship. Under her leadership, UT won the first four women’s SEC outdoor championships, as well as the first women’s SEC indoor championship. She left UT in 1984 for the University of Texas.
J. J. Clark, appointed the first director of track and field when the men’s and women’s track and field programs were combined in 2010, coached the women’s teams to two national championships and three SEC titles as the women’s head coach 2003–9. His contract was not renewed in 2014.