Mircea Bogdan Named Director of Track & Field/Cross Country

Chicago State Interim Director of Athletics Jessica Poole announced today Mircea Bogdan has been named director of the Cougars track & field and cross country teams.
 
"We are excited to welcome Mircea Bogdan to our Chicago State family," Poole said. "Mircea brings an extensive track and field background, as well as domestic and international recruiting experience that will help build on the solid foundation already established. We look forward to watching our track and field and cross country programs flourish under his leadership." 
 
Bogdan joins the Cougars following seven seasons as an assistant coach with the Loyola University Chicago cross country and track & field programs where he also served as a volunteer assistant coach in 2014-15. Under his tutelage, Bogdan played a major role in the development of 36 All-Missouri Valley Conference selections. At the forefront of that group was Kevin White. Under Bogdan's tutelage, White captured three Valley 800m titles, highlighted by back-to-back victories in the event at the outdoor league meet in 2017 and 2018. White earned Honorable Mention All-American honors after he posted the fourth fastest 1,500m time in school history (3:43.26) to qualify for the NCAA Championships.

On the cross country course, Bogdan helped develop Alex Baker into one of the conference's top male runners. A two-time All-Valley selection, Baker earned top-10 finishes in his last two appearances at the MVC Cross Country Championships, highlighted by an impressive runner-up showing (24:38) in the men's 8k race.

Prior to his latest stint at Loyola, Bogdan spent the 2015-16 season as an assistant coach at Western Illinois where he oversaw the men's and women's distance teams and served as a recruiting coordinator, bringing in 35 student-athletes, the Leathernecks largest class in the previous seven years.

The Romania native served as an assistant coach with the women's distance program for the Adidas Boulder-Wave Romanian team and began his coaching career as a graduate assistant coach at Saint Francis University. During his time in Loretto, Pa., the Red Flash captured the 2009 Northeast Conference (NEC) title, with a numerous athletes earning individual league titles as well.

Prior to joining the coaching ranks, Bogdan racked up honors as a student-athlete at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). In 2005, he became the first male Miner since 1999 to be crowned an NCAA champion when he took first in the 3,000m steeplechase at the 2005 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Sacramento, Calif. Just a year later, he helped the school claim a seventh-place finish at the outdoor national meet. Adding to his athletic accomplishments, in 2008, Bogdan qualified to represent Romania in the steeplechase at the Beijing Olympics. He won 20 national championships in Romania and is the current Romanian junior record holder in the 3k steeple.

Bogdan graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso with a Bachelors of Health Science in Kinesiology and a Masters of Education from Saint Francis University.

About Chicago State
Chicago State University Athletics is comprised of 15 intercollegiate teams involving over 150 student-athletes that compete in basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and volleyball. CSU held memberships in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and NCAA Division II before transitioning to NCAA Division I in 1994. Melvin Bland was the first CSU student-athlete to gain NAIA All-American status in 1974 as a wrestler. Fred Evans became the first black swimmer ever to win a national championship in 1975. In 1991, the Chicago State women's tennis team became the first all-black college team to amass an unbeaten season at the NCAA level. CSU's women's basketball team earned a spot in the 2011 Women's Basketball Invitational and CSU's men's basketball team won the 2013 Great West Conference Tournament title, also making an appearance in the CollegeInside.com Postseason Tournament (CIT). The Men's Outdoor Track & Field 4x100-Meter Relay team were 2019 Honorable Mention All-Americans and WAC Champions. Their feat marked the first time the Chicago State's men's track & field program was represented at the national meet. Chicago State volleyball recorded a historic season in 2021, with Yanlis Feliz becoming CSU's first volleyball All-American and head coach Tony Trifonov earning selection as WAC Coach of the Year. During that same season, three different CSU teams earned victories over Big Ten opponents with men's soccer beating Northwestern, women's basketball upending Wisconsin and volleyball, which established a school record 17 wins and hosted a post-season volleyball tournament for the first time in program history, swept Indiana in Bloomington.

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