Maryland coach doing much of his work behind the scenes
Even Andrew Valmon admits “head coach” isn’t the best way to describe his role with the U.S. men’s track and field team at the London Olympics. That may be his title, but the word he uses to describe his job is “facilitator.”
As in, he needs to facilitate so nothing goes wrong.
“There’s a media component, dealing with the press. I’m more of a spokesperson for the team,” says Valmon, the track coach at the University of Maryland. “The other part is … we have to make sure things get done.”
In other words, Valmon’s responsibilities are nothing like, say, Mike Krzyzewski’s with the U.S. men’s basketball team. He and his staff didn’t select the team; the athletes decided who’s going to London with their performances at the trials. He doesn’t work much on technique; the athletes all have individual coaches for that. And for the most part, he’s working with a group of individuals rather than one unit with one purpose.
Instead, the 47-year-old Valmon says providing “an opportunity for everyone to do their jobs” is his biggest task. That includes everything from making sure the coaches and athletes are properly credentialed to get into the stadium to making sure the athletes are in the call room and at the starting line on time.
With so many coaches and athletes all with their own agendas, the games will be all about coordination. So far, he’s finding everyone’s willing to cooperate.
“That has made the transition easier,” Valmon says. “I respect what [the various coaches] do and understand what they do. I have to make sure they get what they need to make their athletes successful. We’re facilitators to make sure the machine keeps going.”
Valmon certainly understands the machine. He had a long professional career as a sprinter, winning gold medals as a member of the United States’ 4×400-meter relay teams at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics and earning spots on 13 national teams. Upon his retirement, he turned to coaching, starting as an assistant at Georgetown in 1995 and working his way up to head coach for his final four years there. Valmon moved north to Maryland in 2003.
While at Maryland, he again became involved with the sport at the national level. Among the prerequisites to coach at the Olympics is time working at other major events. He served as an assistant at the world championships in Berlin in 2009, as the head coach at the world indoor championships in Doha, Qatar, in 2010 and as an observer with women’s Olympic coach Amy Deem at last year’s world championships in Daegu, South Korea.
“It to me is an honor [to coach the Olympic team],” says Valmon, who said he was nominated by an athletes group and then went through several rounds of voting and a final approval by the U.S. Olympic Committee before landing the job. “Ultimately, now I have come full circle. Even though the job is a volunteer one, you’re not going to turn it down. Track made me who I am today, not just as a sprinter but as a coach.”
Thankfully, Valmon now knows he will have a men’s team to come back to at Maryland. Earlier this month, athletic director Kevin Anderson announced that the outdoor track team would compete with a 14-man squad in 2013 but that the other seven condemned teams would be cut because of the program’s financial woes.
“It’s given me an opportunity to take a deep breath, not having to worry about the future,” Valmon says. “It would have been difficult [to focus on the Olympics if it weren’t resolved]. It would have been an element of distraction I didn’t want.”
While the outdoor track team raised $888,000 in private funds to stave off elimination, there was talk as early as February that the program would be saved in some capacity. The fact that Potomac High School speedster Ron Darby, one of the top cornerbacks in the country, said he removed Maryland from his list because it was cutting the track program didn’t go unnoticed, according to several sources at the school.
“I think when you think big picture, you want to see all eight sports remain. You never want the situation where sports [have to be eliminated],” Valmon says. “The thing about track is it brings together athletes from other sports. … We tend to have athletes who cross over from other sports. One of those is football. How much that played a role, I’m not sure. But we have a big alumni base, and they deserve a lot of credit.”
