Courtesy: UMBC Sports Information
BALTIMORE?Longtime track and field coach David Bobb has been rehired as UMBC’s head track and field coach for the 2007-08 season, Director of Athletics Dr. Charles Brown announced today.
Andrew Torge, previous assistant track and field coach at St. Francis University (Pa.) has been hired as the assistant track and field coach, Brown also announced.
Bobb resigned this past May in order to pursue other career opportunities and relocate his family to Bermuda, but has decided to retake the reins of the Retrievers’ track and field program. He is replacing former cross country and track and field head coach Scott Catone, who resigned earlier this month for personal reasons. A search for a new head cross country coach is currently underway.
“We are ecstatic about the return of David Bobb,” Dr. Brown said. “He was UMBC’s premier student-athlete and was doing an amazing job as the head coach of the program.”
A five-time All-American for UMBC, Bobb competed from 1994-97, became the head women’s track and field coach in 1998, and took control of both the men’s and women’s track and field teams in 1999.
During his coaching career at UMBC, Bobb has produced two NCAA Championship competitors in Cleopatra Borel and Huguens Jean, with Borel becoming UMBC’s first Division I national champion in the shot put in 2002. In 2003, Bobb was inducted into the UMBC Athletics Hall of Fame along with his coach and mentor, Jim Pfrogner.
Bobb has coached numerous conference champions, ECAC/IC4A qualifiers and NCAA Regional qualifiers and was named America East Conference Coach of the Year at the 2006 indoor championships after leading the Retriever men to a second place finish.
This past year Bobb coached the men’s team to a third-place finish and the women to a seventh-place finish at the outdoor conference championships, with UMBC also taking the Men’s Rookie of the Meet and Women’s Field Performer of the Meet accolades.
The men’s and women’s track and field teams combined to set 15 new school records and one America East Conference Championship record, crown league champions in nine events, crown one IC4A champion, qualify four athletes for the NCAA East Regional Championships, and qualify a total of 15 athletes in 21 events and three relays for the IC4A/ECAC Championships under Bobb’s tutelage in the 2006-07 season.
Torge served as the assistant men’s and women’s track and field coach at St. Francis (Pa.) from 2005-07. During his two years with the Red Flash, Torge coached three NCAA Regional qualifiers, 11 indoor and outdoor IC4A/ECAC qualifiers, and four Northeast Conference individual champions, including the 2007 Northeast Conference Indoor Field Athlete of the Year.
A 2005 graduate of Penn State University, Torge earned his Bachelor’s degree in history after competing as a decathlete and heptathlete for the Nittany Lions for two years and qualifying for the IC4A championships. He earned his master’s degree in human resource management from St. Francis (Pa.) in 2007.
Earlier this summer, Torge earned the silver medal in the open division of the high jump at the Empire State Games.