KU's Pate Claims Second-Consecutive Assistant of the Year Honor
March 14, 2013
NEW ORLEANS – Kansas track & field’s horizontal jumps and combined-events coach Wayne Pate was named the women’s assistant coach of the year it was announced by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Thursday. The award is Pate’s second-straight indoor national honor and fifth of his coaching career.
“Coach Pate has really worked hard ever since he arrived here,” said head coach Stanley Redwine. “To be able to do what he did at the conference meet – with his athletes scoring over 50 points – was phenomenal. Then to have his athletes do as well as they did at the national meet was outstanding. He’s a great guy and this couldn’t happen to a better person.”
Pate, in his sixth season with the Jayhawks as the jumps and women’s combined events coach, mentored the 2013 national field athlete of the year, Andrea Geubelle, to the fourth long jump/triple jump dual NCAA Indoor championship in NCAA history and first since 2003. Geubelle’s winning 14.18 meter (46’6.25″) mark is the fourth-best triple jump in collegiate history. Pate also guided Francine Simpson to a third-place showing in the long jump for a total of 26 of the runner-up Jayhawks’ 44 points at the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Pate coached three individual Big 12 Champions and contributed 53 points en route to a team crown for Kansas. Guebelle won the triple jump, Simpson won the long jump title and Lindsay Vollmer claimed the indoor pentathlon with the sixth-best collegiate score this season.
The Indiana alumnus is in his 33rd year as a coach at the collegiate level and has now claimed a regional or national coach of the year award a combined ten times in indoor and outdoor track & field.
Pate and the rest of the KU coaching staff are now preparing their athletes for the outdoor portion of the season and will make the journey to their first outdoor meet of the year, the Texas Relays, in Austin, Texas, March 27-30. Stay updated on everything KU track & field until then through KUAthletics.com and on Twitter at KU_Track.
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