Ben Mourer was named the Allegheny head men's and women's cross country, and assistant track and field coach in December 2015.
A 2007 Allegheny graduate, Mourer returns to his alma mater after spending the past seven years at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, including the last four as the head cross country and associate head track and field coach.
At the helm of the Kohawk cross country program, Mourer coached Coe's first ever Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference champion and IIAC MVP, as well as three NCAA Championship qualifiers, while he significantly increased the size of both the men's and women's cross country rosters through recruitment.
Mourer also saw various distance runners re-write the Coe track and field record book. In 2011, Keeley Finnel became Coe's first NCAA National Champion, finishing first in the 800 meter run, before finishing runner-up in the event a season later. She earned CoSIDA Academic All-America honors each season. A total of 24 Coe distance and mid-distance runners earned All-Conference honors during Mourer's tenure, while six new school records were set.
Mourer began his coaching career as an assistant at Coe in 2009, while earning a Masters in Teaching. During his six-year tenure in Cedar Rapids, he also served as an adjunct instructor in the school's physical education department, teaching a pair of classes while helping to create and implement the department's curricula.
A native of Chicora, Pennsylvania, Mourer was a four-year Alden Scholar at Allegheny, graduating in 2007 with a degree in history. He was a key member of the Gator track and field and cross country teams during an era of unprecedented success. In cross country, Allegheny won the North Coast Athletic Conference championship in all four of Mourer's seasons, while turning in a pair of top-10 finishes at the NCAA Championship, highlighted by the team's third-place showing in 2006. Individually, he was a three-time All-NCAC honoree, twice earning First Team honors, including a 2007 season in which he finished as conference runner-up.
Specializing in the 1,500, mile, and 5,000, Mourer was also a six-time All-NCAC honoree in track and field, and helped the Gators to four straight NCAC indoor and outdoor team titles.
Mourer inherits an Allegheny program that is coming off of its most successful season in recent memory, as both the Gator men and women captured the 2015 NCAC championship, before the men finished second and the women third at the Great Lakes Regional Championships to each earn a berth in the NCAA Division-III National Championship, marking the first time since 2008 that both teams competed at nationals.
In addition to serving as head coach of the men's and women's cross country teams, Mourer will also be an assistant coach on the Gator track and field staff with head coach Justin Linzy.
