Johnson, Powell Tabbed with Coaches Honors
NEW ORLEANS – Oregon head coach Robert Johnson was named the men’s and women’s National Coach of the Year and distance coach Andy Powell won men’s National Assistant Coach of the Year, the USTFCCCA announced, Wednesday.
This comes days after the men and women swept the team titles at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships for the first time in school history. The men’s team defended its national title with 89 points and the biggest winning margin in 21 years (29 points). The women’s team finished with 59 points, nine ahead of second-place Kentucky.
Johnson has loaded up on national coaching awards in recent years. Since becoming associate head women’s coach in 2010-11 and program head in 2012-13, he’s won nine out of twenty possible national coach of the year awards for indoor and outdoor track & field. In his time as head coach he has led the Ducks to a combined five track and field national championships, indoors and outdoors.
Powell won his first outdoor assistant of the year award (after two indoor honors) thanks to huge points from Oregon’s distance runners. Edward Cheserek and Eric Jenkins went 1-2 in the 10,000 and 5,000, Will Geoghegan was fourth in the 5,000, and freshman Blake Haney took third in the 1,500. The forty-seven points those four netted would have been a fourth place podium finish as a team; the twenty-three points posted by Cheserek, Jenkins, and Geoghegan in the 5,000 were the second most in the event in meet history.
