Staff Directory
- Title:
- Assistant Coach
Harry Marra, who coached Team USA’s national decathlon squad from 1990-2000, is in his third season with the program.
As a volunteer coach, Marra works with assistant coach Jamie Cook to train the Ducks’ combined events athletes.
In 2011, Marra helped coach Brianne Theisen to a collegiate record 4,540 points in winning her second second consecutive NCAA pentathlon title. Marra also coaches Oregon graduate Ashton Eaton, who was the 2011 U.S. champion in the decathlon and finished second at the IAAF World Championships.
Prior to that, Marra spent the 2010 season as a full-time assistant on the Oregon staff, and helped Eaton and Theisen each win a pair of NCAA titles. Theisen captured her first pentathlon title and second heptathlon title for the women, while Eaton claimed indoor heptathlon and outdoor decathlon crowns on the way to winning the 2011 Bowerman Award as the nation's top male collegiate athlete.
Theisen won the heptathlon crown with a school-record 6,094 points, while Eaton took his third straight decathlon title with a school and NCAA meet record 8,457 points. He also tallied a then-world record 6,499 points in winning the indoor heptathlon.
Marra has also been heavily involved with Oregon's annual kid's clinic held in conjunction with the City of Eugene's "Starting Block" program.
Marra, who coached Paul Terek to a 10th-place finish in the decathlon at the 2007 IAAF World Championships in Osaka, Japan, has more than 30 years experience coaching athletes at every level from high school to professional.
Marra was Team USA’s national decathlon coach from 1990-2000 and helped seven different decathletes score 8,000 points.
Among those competitors is Eaton, currently the world record-holder in the indoor heptathlon (6,568 points) with a PR of 8,729 points in the decathlon.
Terek was a three-time national U.S. indoor champion and 2004 Olympian who ranks as the 14th-best decathlete in American history with 8,312 points. Other Marra-coached decathletes who have eclipsed the 8,000-point mark are Sheldon Blockburger (8,296), Brian Brophy (8,276), Paul Foxon (8,254), Bart Goodell (8,109) and Chris Wilcox (8,026).
Marra was the head track and field coach at San Francisco State for 12 years (1981-93) where he was twice named Northern California Athletic Conference coach of the year (1985, ’90) and is also a member of that school’s hall of fame. He coached one NCAA champion and 24 All-Americans while at SFSU. During that time, Marra was also a speed and fitness consultant for the San Francisco Giants.
He previously served as head coach at Springfield College in Massachusetts for four years and as an assistant coach at UC Santa Barbara for two years before that.
He was a member of the United States’ coaching staff at the IAAF World Championships in Paris (2003), Helsinki (2005) and Osaka (2007) and was an assistant coach for the 1999 Pan American Games, where U.S athletes won five gold medals, four silvers and a bronze and set a pair of meet records. He was also a coach for the 1981 and ’82 U.S. Olympic Festivals.
A native of Cohoes, N.Y., Marra graduated from Mount St. Mary’s and holds a Master’s Degree from Syracuse.
