Olympic champion and world record holder
Paul Ereng has been named UTEP's head cross country coach and assistant track and field coach announced track coach Bob Kitchens on Friday.
Ereng, 36, becomes the first Kenyan to receive a collegiate track and field coaching job in the United States.
The native of Eldoret, Kenya, joins the Miner staff after serving as the technical director of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) High Performance Training Center in Eldoret for the past three years.
While the director of the program, Ereng coached the 3,000-meter steeplechase silver medalist at the Commonwealth Games, the Kenya national champion in the steeplechase and the world junior gold medalist in the 800-meter run.
Ereng holds a level two middle and long distance coaching certificate from the IAAF. He has been the president of Africa Region V Track and Field Coaches Association, founder of the Kenya Coaches Commission, president of the National Association of Kenya Olympians and the secretary general for the Rift Valley Province Track and Field Association.
During his tenure with the IAAF, he served as head coach of the Kenya National Team at the 2002 IAAF World Junior Championships in Kingston, Jamaica.
Before joining the coaching ranks, Ereng was one of the world's top 800-meter runners during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Ereng attended the University of Virginia where he was a three-time Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) champion, three-time NCAA champion and four-time NCAA All-American.
As a freshman, Ereng won the 1998 NCAA outdoor 800 title. Later that summer, he captured the gold medal for Kenya in the 800 at the 1998 Seoul Olympic Games sprinting past Joaquim Cruz of Brazil and Said Aouita of Morocco in the last stretch of the finals.
In 1989 he broke the world indoor record in the 800 with a time of 1:44.84 taking the gold at the World Indoor Championships in Budapest, Hungary. Days later, he won his second NCAA title, clocking 1:47.69. Later in the spring he defended his NCAA outdoor crown, running 1:47.50.
During the 1989 outdoor season, Ereng won 14 out of 15 races during and had the world's fastest time of 1:43.16. He won his second 800 world indoor title in 1991 and was a semifinalist in the event at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
A 1993 graduate of Virginia with a degree religious studies, he picked up numerous awards during his collegiate career, including two MVP awards, the 1989 WCHV Award as Virginia's best male Athlete, and the Fifth Annual Jumbo Elliott Award, recognizing him as the nation's outstanding male collegiate track and field athlete of 1989.
In 2002, he was named as a all-time, top-10 achiever in track and field by the ACC and the lifetime athletics award by the IAAF.
Ereng and his wife, Fatuma, have two daughters (Jasmine & Victoria).
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