Bobby Van Allen enters his 11th season as head coach of the Johns Hopkins women's cross country and track & field programs. Van Allen helped lead Hopkins to its best finish in school history in 2009, placing seventh at the NCAA Cross Country Championships. The Blue Jays also won their second consecutive Mideast Region and Centennial Conference Championships. In 2008, He earned USTFCCCA Mideast Region Coach of the Year honors after the women's cross country team won the NCAA Mideast Regional and placed 13th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships. Van Allen also earned Centennial Conference Coach of the Year honors after leading the Blue Jays to their first women's cross country title and first individual champion, Laura Paulsen. Hopkins continued its success into the winter months, as four Blue Jays earned All-American honors at the NCAA Division III Indoor Track Championships. The women's distance medley relay team of Rachel Hogen, Jordan Ireton, Paula Osborn and Laura Paulsen placed seventh in the nation at the NCAA Championships. Van Allen led the JHU women's cross country squad to the most successful season to date in 2008, as it qualified as a team for the NCAA Championships, marking the first time that Hopkins qualified as a team. Van Allen also guided both the men and women's track & field teams to USTFCCCA All-Academic Team honors. Van Allen joined the Hopkins coaching staff in 1999 as an assistant assigned to the development of distance runners. He became the head coach in the fall of 1999 and the first full-time head coach in the history of the program in 2002. Among Van Allen's accomplishments as head coach, he has continued to improve the program, bolstering its size to the highest levels in its history, bringing in top-level recruits. The women's cross country had its best season in school history under Van Allen in 2007, placing third at the Centennial Conference Championships and the NCAA Regionals and earning 29th at the NCAA Division III Championship. Van Allen also led the men's cross country team to a third place finish in the Centennial Conference in 2007 -a program-best- and Patrick Brandon qualified for the NCAA Championships. In the spring of 2008, both the men's and women's track and field teams finished third in the conference. Adam Waddell provisionally qualified for the NCAAs in the decathlon, while Laura Paulsen was an automatic qualifier in both the 5,000m and 10,000m events in 2007. Van Allen's coaching career began in the fall of 1998 at the University of Maryland, where he was a volunteer assistant coach for the cross country team. A 1998 graduate of the University of Maryland, Van Allen earned his B.S. in kinesiological sciences with a bio-physical option. At Maryland, Van Allen competed on the cross country and track and field squads. As a Terrapin, he earned All-East cross country accolades and was a finalist at the ACC Championships in the 1500m. Van Allen earned a coach's diploma from the USTFCCCA and holds a Level 1 coaching certificate from USATF. |
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