Pat McCurry guides the Dons through his second season at the helm of the University of San Francisco men's and women's cross country and track programs in 2019-20, following an extremely successful first year on The Hilltop in 2018-19.
EARLY SUCCESS
After arriving on campus in late summer 2018, McCurry went straight to work with the successful cross country programs that he inherited. Each were coming off top-three West Coast Conference Championship finishes and top-10 NCAA West Region finishes in 2017, including the women who had won a WCC Championship, a West Region title and finished second at the NCAA National Championship the year prior. McCurry led the women back to the podium in 2018 with a third-place finish at the WCC Championship, and also guided them to their fourth consecutive top-10 regional finish in November. For the men, Jack Rowe qualified as an individual for the NCAA Championship after finishing fifth at the West Region meet.
The Dons saw record performances throughout the winter and spring on the track under McCurry's tutelage. Senior Chris Olley broke the men's indoor 3,000-meter record on two occasions, and Dana Klein broke the women's 3,000 record at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships in February. Once outdoors, the Dons etched their names into the women's top-10 USF record book 10 different times, and also set five new relay records on top of that. The 4x400 relay record alone was broken three times during the 2019 spring outdoor track season. Sadi Henderson broke the Dons' 800 record in her Green-and-Gold debut in March, and would break it three more times during the season before leaving her mark in the record book at 2 minutes, 3.31 seconds.
San Francisco sent five student-athletes to the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field West Region Preliminary Meet (three men, two women), and would eventually send two of them - Sadi Henderson and Klein - to the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field National Championships.
The programs also had a bounty of academic success in McCurry's first season. Both cross country teams and both track teams each earned USTFCCCA All-Academic Accolades, and a total of seven individual USTFCCCA All-Academic awards were earned by the student-athletes.
In just his first recruiting class heading into the 2019-20 academic year, McCurry and his staff brought in over 20 new men and women student-athletes. The talented and diverse class included 10 distance runners, five middle-distance specialists and six sprinters/hurdlers, spread out among 18 women and three men. The class hailed from 10 different states and seven different countries. A strong base of 15 true freshmen mixed with the leadership and experience of six transfers.
PRIOR TO USF
Before coming to USF, McCurry was in charge of the programs at Boise State and made an immediate impact for the Broncos. Overseeing the middle distance runners, in his first year he guided Henderson, then a student-athlete at Boise State, to All-American honors in the 800 meters at both the Indoor and Outdoor NCAA Track and Field Championships. In 2018, he had four female athletes qualify for the NCAA West Preliminary Round meet, three of them in the 800. He had two women qualify for the Outdoor NCAA Championship in the 800 that same year. In doing so, Boise State joined Texas A&M, Clemson, and Villanova as the only teams in the country to have that honor.
In the indoor arena, the women's distance medley relay ran the fastest time in the country in 2018, clocking in with a time of 10:58.93, a program record and first time under the 11-minute barrier. That same season, Henderson was named the USTFCCCA West Region Track Athlete of the Year for Indoor. Adding a sixth place finish at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, the Bronco women’s program finished sixth overall in the USTFCCCA Program of the Year standings.
Prior to Boise State, McCurry spent the previous 12 seasons as the head coach of the College of Idaho men's and women's cross country and track and field programs. While at the College of Idaho, McCurry guided the women's track and field team to four-consecutive Cascade Collegiate Conference Championships from 2013-16. He led 153 C of I track and field athletes to All-CCC honors and 69 to individual championships. In addition, four cross country athletes earned individual conference titles under his guidance.
On the national stage, McCurry led the women's cross country team to two runner-up finishes in 2012 and 2013. His Lady 'Yotes also finished third at the 2013 NAIA National Indoor Track & Field Championships. He coached four different women to individual national titles at C of I in events ranging from the 400 hurdles to the 5,000. Hillary Holt won ten NAIA national titles in her career there. McCurry’s men’s cross country teams qualified for ten straight national meets, and standout Greg Montgomery was twice a national runner-up.
COACHING POST-COLLEGIATE ATHLETES
McCurry has also coached several post-collegiate athletes over the last few years, including several elite women's steeplechasers. Most recently, he trained San Francisco alumna Lizzie Bird to an IAAF World Championships standard in the steeplechase, running 9:36.84. Later, in August 2019, she finished a close runner-up at the British Track and Field Championships, qualifying her for the 2019 World Championships in Doha, where she ran a lifetime best of 9:30.13 and was only one spot from making the World Championships final. She narrowly missed a spot in the finals by 0.13 seconds. All of that coming after she had began 2019 with a personal best of 9:53, shaving 23 seconds off by season's end.
He guided Alycia Butterworth to a spot on the Canadian team for the 2017 IAAF World Championships in London. Boise State alumna Marisa Howard had a banner 2017 season under McCurry, running a personal best of 9:30, which ranked her fifth among American steeplers. She also finished fifth in the steeplechase at the 2019 U.S. Track and Field Championships in July. She qualified for the Pan-American Championships team, where she earned a silver medal in August in Lima, Peru. Megan Rolland finished seventh at the 2016 Olympic Trials and eighth at the 2017 USATF Outdoor National Championships.
