It only took Patrick Henner two years as Director of Georgetown men’s and women’s track and field to earn THE HOYA’s Coach of the Year award. But if you ask him about it, he’ll tell you that it didn’t all suddenly come together for him this season.
“It’s all a body of work,” Henner says. “I think that if you’re really trying to run a track and field program that you try to work for a span of three or four years, and you’re trying to project into the future for the next three or four years.”
Perhaps coach of the year isn’t really the appropriate term, then.
“I don’t really look at it as `Hey, this is a great year.’ I think that it’s just a body of work, and I think that what we’re most proud of is the consistency over time,” he says.
Regardless of the number of years of work that went into Henner’s success as director in 2009-10, this past season is when the fruits of his labor shone brightest.
The season isn’t even over yet, but Henner has already guided Georgetown track and field to one of its best years in recent memory: Six Hoyas earned All-America honors under Henner at the 2010 Indoor Track and Field Championships, and the men’s cross country team took home its fifth consecutive Mid-Atlantic Cross Country Regional in the fall. In late 2009, Henner was named Mid-Atlantic Cross Country Coach of the Year.
The accomplishments go on and on. The men’s indoor team finished second at the Big East championships in New York this February, and the men’s 4×100 meter relay team has broken the school record twice in the last month – first at Penn Relays in April and then again last weekend at the IC4A Championships. What Henner is happiest about, however, is the balance that he has maintained across each of the men’s and women’s teams.
“One of the things that I’m most proud about is that across the board from the short sprints all the way to the long distance [events], we’re being very competitive at a national level,” he says. “For a small, private school like Georgetown, there’s something to be said for that. . In every single sport, we’re always among the top of the Big East and we’re always having some of the best athletes in the country on our teams.”
The recruitment of those top athletes is a credit to Henner, but he is the first to point to Georgetown’s history and the momentum he inherited from his predecessors as determinant factors in this year’s achievements.
“Georgetown has an incredible history, and it’s not a place where you’re going to come in and try to [change too much],” he says. “You’re just going to try to keep that history going.”
Henner explains that he is honored to follow in the footsteps of former directors like Frank Gagliano and Ron Helmer, both of whom influenced him in 1999 to leave his previous post at James Madison University and come to the Hilltop.
Henner arrived at Georgetown as head coach of the men’s cross country team and assistant coach of the men’s and women’s track and field programs, and after eight years on the staff, he was named director on June 22, 2007. He remains humble in his recently acquired position, however, and acknowledges that the team’s accomplishments this season have been a combined effort.
“One of the reasons that I really wanted [the job] was the chance to work with the assistants and the staff that I have,” Henner says. “And the other element is just the loyalty and tenacity of our athletes.”
Take standout distance runner and graduate student Andrew Bumbalough, for example.
“This is a kid who has definitely overcome a lot of adversity,” Henner says. “He’s had some injuries. He had mono this indoor season. But he’s been fully engaged and very loyal to the program every step of the way, and I think that’s a very special [quality of] Hoya track and field.”
As mentioned earlier, the Hoyas’ 2010 season is ongoing. Three events – NCAA Regionals, NCAA Outdoor Championships and USA Nationals – remain on the docket for May and June. The first of those events begins a week from today in Greensboro, Ore., and Henner feels that his runners are prepared to excel out west.
“I feel like every single person that we’re taking to [NCAA Regionals] has either a shot at [qualifying for the NCAA Outdoor Championships] or a great shot at it,” Henner says. “I think that’s one really good thing about our program right now, that pretty much everybody that we line up down in Greensboro is going to have a very legitimate shot at making the NCAA meet a couple weeks later.”
As for his long-term vision of Georgetown track and field, Henner hopes to keep the drive of this year and seasons past going into the future – all while maintaining the program’s historic balance.
“I think our goal should be to keep honoring the tradition of what Georgetown track and field is all about,” he says. “That’s the thing that a lot of people don’t understand. We are one of the few [schools] that is trying to be very good in cross country, compete for Big East championships in both indoor and outdoor track and have national-caliber athletes.”
According to Henner, that sort of broad mission is hard to come by in the collegiate ranks.
“In this day and age, most programs are very specialized. A lot of the small private schools are just focusing on cross country or just being sprint schools. I think that the diversity that we bring, both in terms of personnel and event areas, is something that we want to keep expanding and keep emphasizing,” he says.
The model is working for Georgetown track and field thus far, and Henner has succeeded in bringing in and molding a talented group of student-athletes who can keep pace with the best of the best at any distance.
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