Coach Coogan's Successful Saturday
Dartmouth coach Mark Coogan had the winner and a daughter in the same race at NCAA indoors.
By Scott Douglas
Robert James Reese
You could excuse Mark Coogan if his attention seemed divided Saturday during the women's 3000-meter race at the NCAA indoor championships.
Coogan (above) is the coach at Dartmouth, where his star runner is Abbey D'Agostino. As a sophomore last year, she won the NCAA outdoor 5000-meter title, and then placed fifth at the Olympic Trials. On Friday night, she added the indoor NCAA 5000-meter title to her credentials.
The following night, D'Agostino was one of 16 women in the 3000-meter championship race. So you'd think that Coogan would be solely focused on whether she could become the first American woman to win the 3-K/5-K double at the meet. And yet...
Look at the results of the race, and, after noting that D'Agostino did indeed win, you might be stopped by the name of the seventh finisher: Georgetown freshman Katrina Coogan.
As in, daughter of Mark Coogan and Coogan's former wife, Gwyn, both of whom were U.S. Olympians (Gwyn at 10,000 meters in 1992, Mark in the marathon in 1996).
And, just to keep things interesting, the eighth finisher, Alexi Pappas of Oregon, ran at Dartmouth under Coogan through last spring. At that time, she graduated from Dartmouth, which as an Ivy League school doesn't allow athletes to defer athletic eligibility past graduation, and transferred to Oregon to use her remaining eligibility.
Was there ever discussion that daughter Katrina would run at Dartmouth?
"Not really," Coogan told Runner's World Newswire. "She wanted to go to a great school in a city. She did not want to have a similar experience as Philips Exeter," the private high school in rural New Hampshire where her mother, a Ph.D. in math, teaches.
Coach Coogan might have had a premonition that things would go well Saturday evening. That morning, the one pro runner he coaches, Ben True, won the national 15-K championship.
Thanks to reader/former 2:16 marathoner Joseph McVeigh for the tip.
Scott Douglas Scott is a veteran running, fitness, and health journalist who has held senior editorial positions at Runner's World and Running Times.
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