Dr. Don McGarey returns for his fifth season as the head coach of the program he helped build, Kennesaw State men’s and women’s track and field . With the Owls now eligible for NCAA Regional and National competition after successfully completing the NCAA’s mandatory four-year re-classification period, McGarey is excited to see what the future holds for his athletes and is poised to take a program that has already seen 162 athletes be named to All- Atlantic Sun teams in their first four years to untold heights.
McGarey competed in both cross country and track as a scholarship athlete, first at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, FL and then at Louisiana State University. After finishing his eligibility at LSU and graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in mi¬crobiology, he stayed on as a graduate assistant coach for three years.
After earning his Ph.D. from South Florida in biology and completing a post-doctoral research study at the University of Florida, Mc¬Garey became an Assistant Professor of Biology at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. It was there that he returned to coaching as an Assistant Coach for the Gamecock’s cross-country teams.
McGarey came to Kennesaw State University as an Associate Professor in 1998 and joined Stan Sims’ coaching staff with men’s and women’s cross country in 1999. He infused new practice regiments into the program that helped develop some of the University’s greatest runners.
Prior to the formation of a full-fledged track and field program at KSU, McGarey and Sims would take their cross country runners to compete in distance events at track meets during the spring, and got a taste of what success could be like on the flat surface. Four of his runners would attain All-American status, and two-time NCAA Division II Cross Country National Champion Marjo Venalainen would add to her trophy case, winning the Division II National Championship in the 1500 and 3000 Meter events in 2001. Addition¬ally, three other runners competed at nationals and several more made national qualifying provisional times.
In 2005, the KSU Athletic Department was facing the monumental challenge of putting together a track & field program from scratch. Thanks to his success as assistant coach for the cross country team and overseeing the distance runners during track season, McGarey was chosen to be the head coach for the new Division I indoor and outdoor track programs.
Building a program from the bottom up was not new to McGarey as he was part of the LSU program in the 1980’s when it transitioned from a respectable program to a track and field powerhouse. McGarey assembled a lineup of athletes from the cross country team that could make a significant impact as distance runners in track. He then focused on building a team of talented sprinters and throwers to round out his roster of athletes.
In 2006, their first year of competition, the men’s team was able to place second at the Atlantic Sun Outdoor Track and Field Champi¬onship on the strength of their runners. Five runners won individual titles, and their 4 x 400 Meter Relay team was victorious, as well. Another seven earned All-Conference honors in their inaugural year.
As each season goes by the track & field team becomes a more defined program under McGarey’s leadership.The roster continues to expand as more and more of the top talent in the South and in the country discover the strong foundation for a winning program that Coach McGarey is putting together.
Dr. McGarey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology and Physics at Kennesaw State University. Don, his wife Toni and their children Alix and Chance make their home in Kennesaw, GA.
Middle Distance Outlook: “I hope to see our middle distance squad continue to dominate. We return all of our top placers from last year including Gianni Catalano, Daniel Grass, Michael Guntner, Piotr Witczak and Jaakko Nieminen. Piotr and Jaakko are coming off an outstanding cross-country season and have greatly improved their longer distance racing. Gianni, Dan and Mike are a formidable trio in the 800. On the women’s side, we have made adjustments by moving some of the middle distance runners to longer distance, and a few 400 meter runners up to 800 meters. Last year we scored poorly at conference in the women’s middle distance events and I am hoping to turn this around. It may require some of our top distance runners such as Erin Sutton and Mackenzie Howe to broaden their events to include middle distance. Caitlin German is our lone middle distance runner from last year that is still with the group and is expected to have a big impact.”
