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Issued: August 30, 2006

CROSS COUNTRY/TRACK AND FIELD MAKE COACHING CHANGES

The resignation of Tracy Yengo as the UW-Eau Claire head women's cross country and track and field coaches has triggered some changes in the staffing of the men's and women's programs, according to Director of Athletics Scott Kilgallon.

Yengo stepped down after 10 years as the Blugold women's cross country and track & field coaches to accept a fulltime teaching position in the university's Department of Kinesiology.

As a result, Kilgallon has named men's cross country and track coach Chip Schneider as Director of Operations for both the men's and women's cross country and track & field programs. He also has named Brian Falk as the head cross country coach and assistant track & field coach for the men's and women's programs.

During Yengo's tenure, the Blugolds were the NCAA Division III cross country runner-up in 1997 when she was also named the WIAC Coach of the Year. She has taken three teams to the NCAA nationals and coached two All-Americans. In track, the past decade, the Blugolds have had 30 All-American finishes with 11 individuals and a relay team. The most decorated athletes during her regime were hurdlers Breanna McMullen and Jen Stafslien and pole vaulter Steph Barnes. The Blugolds finished as high as eighth in the NCAA outdoor meet in 2005 and 13th in the NCAA indoor meet this past season.

Schneider, a conference and national champion while competing at UW-Platteville, has been the Blugold men's track coach since 2002-03 and the men's cross country coach since 2003-04.

Falk has been a teacher for 16 years and a coach for 19 years, most recently at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. As the primary distance coach in the track and field program for nine seasons at Dickinson, Falk has had 11 individual Centennial Conference champions, nine NCAA championship qualifiers and seven All-Americans. Since 2001, he has also served as an assistant in a women's cross country program that has won all five Centennial Conference titles, three Mid-East regional titles and finished three times in the top ten at the NCAA meet.

Falk has been a health/physical education teacher at Susquehanna Township High School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania since 1990. He was the head cross country coach from 1991-2000, rejuvenating a boys' program that had only three athletes when he started and reviving the girls' cross country program as a team sport in 1995.

He is currently involved as an assistant coach, clinician and conference organizer for an online service that provides personal coaching to adult recreational runners.

Falk earned his undergraduate degree in Physical Education and Teacher Education from Temple University in 1988 and his master's in Exercise Science from McDaniel College, formerly Western Maryland College, in 2003.

- TP -

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