Dave Cianelli

The Virginia Tech track and field and cross country programs have become a model of consistency under Director of Track & Field and Cross Country Dave Cianelli since his hiring in 2001.

2022 marked a historic year for the Hokies and saw some of the team’s greatest accomplishments under Cianelli. As Tech hosted the 2022 ACC Indoor Championships at Rector Field House, Cianelli led both the men’s and women’s teams to conference titles. The men’s squad earned their second-straight indoor title and the women tied on points with Duke for co-champion status, as the Hokies swept the men’s and women’s titles for the first time in school history. The 2022 championships also marked the first time ever in the ACC that a host school won both men’s and women’s titles, indoors or outdoors. For his leadership over the two championship teams, Cianelli was voted both the Men’s and Women’s ACC Indoor Coach of the Year.
 
Success for Tech was not just limited to the conference level, as at the 2022 NCAA Indoor Championships Rachel Baxter (pole vault) and Lindsey Butler (800m) picked up the 18^th and 19^th NCAA titles in program history, all under Cianelli. The two national titles and eight other All-American performances on the women’s side saw the Hokie women finish in sixth place at the national meet, the highest indoor finish for the women in program history and their second highest ever (2010, fifth outdoors).
 
In addition to picking up the NCAA pole vault title, Rachel Baxter also won her fourth-straight ACC title, becoming the first vaulter – men’s or women’s – to win the conference title four consecutive times. Lindsey Butler’s NCAA title in the 800m capped a sensational run of form where she repeated as ACC champion in the event and anchored the distance medley relay team to ACC Championships and Rector Field House facility records. Cole Beck won the men’s 200m at the ACC Championships and finished third in the 60m, earning Men’s Track MVP for his performances.
 
Outdoors in 2022, Beck and fellow Blacksburg native Ben Fleming set the standard for Cianelli’s Hokies. Fleming won the 3,000m steeplechase at the ACC Championships, marking the third consecutive time a Tech athlete has won the event. Beck finished as runner-up in both the 100m and 200m, adding the outdoor Men’s Track MVP to his indoor honor. Beck also anchored the historic 4x100m relay team, as he joined with Kahleje Tillmon (who won the 200m over Beck), Torrence Walker, and Kennedy Harrison to win Virginia Tech’s first ACC title in the event, break the school record three times with three sub-39 performances, and earn Tech’s highest ever finish in the event at NCAAs.
 
Yet another of Cianelli’s athletes picked up an ACC record, as Sara Killinen delivered the furthest hammer throw in conference history on the women’s side. The Finn’s mark of 71.02m (233’ 0”) made her the first woman ever in the ACC to throw the hammer past 71 meters and earned her fourth-place honors at the NCAA Outdoor Championships. With Killinen’s record, Cianelli’s athletes now hold the ACC hammer record on both the men’s and women’s sides, as Marcel Lomnicky’s mark of 75.84m (248’ 10”) from 2011 stands unbroken.

The Hokies’ long run of excellence continued in 2021, as the Virginia Tech men’s track and field team won the ACC indoor title by the largest margin of victory in the ACC's modern era. The Hokies tallied 136 team points, 55 more than any other team at the meet. Cianelli was awarded ACC Men's Indoor Coach of the Year and USTFCCCA Men's Indoor Coach of the Year for the Southeast Region following the men's team's success.

The Tech men's track and field program now has won ten ACC championships under Cianelli since the school joined the league for the 2004-05 season. The Hokies have won four outdoor league titles, including championships in three of the past five seasons.
 
Overall, under Cianelli, the Tech men’s and women’s track and field and cross country programs have combined to win 19 ACC team championships.
 
Several student athletes excelled during the 2021 indoor season under Cianelli’s coaching, including Rachel Baxter, Lindsey Butler, and Jacory Patterson. At the 2021 ACC Indoor Championships, Baxter became the first athlete in ACC history to win three consecutive women’s pole vault titles, winning with a height of 4.37m (14’ 4”). Baxter went on to finish fourth at the NCAA Indoor Championships, earning first team All-America honors in the process. Sophomore Lindsey Butler shot onto the conference and national scene indoors, winning the women’s 800m at the conference meet with a school record and collegiate-leading time of 2:01.96. Jacory Patterson continued his run at the top of all ACC sprinters, winning both the 200m and 400m and earning the title of conference track MVP.
 
Outdoor competition saw a welcome return in 2021 following the cancellation of the 2020 outdoor season due to COVID-19. Under Cianelli, several student athletes excelled and made history for the Hokies. Blacksburg native Cole Beck became the first athlete ever to win the men’s 100m at the ACC Championships for Virginia Tech and followed his conference title by becoming only the second Hokie to qualify for the NCAA Outdoor Championships in the men’s 100m. A trio of Hokies throwers dominated the circle at the ACC Championships, as Essence Henderson, Tyson Jones, and Alexios Prodanas all won their events. Henderson and Jones swept the shot put, while Prodanas took gold in the hammer throw.
 
Following the collegiate season, several Hokies continued their training for the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Adding to the athletes Cianelli has guided towards Olympic qualification were Irena Gillarova ’17 and freshman Barbora Malíková. Both athletes represented the Czech Republic in Tokyo, with Gillarova competing in the javelin throw and Malíková running the 400m. Hokie legend Marcel Lomnický competed in his third consecutive Olympic Games, throwing hammer for Slovakia.

The 2019 season certainly featured its share of great individual moments as well. Rachel Pocratsky and Deakin Volz both concluded their great careers under Cianelli, with Pocratsky earning a bronze medal in the 800-meter dash at the NCAA Indoor Championships and sweeping both the 800 and the 1,500 at the ACC Outdoor Championships for the second straight season. She departed with six ACC gold medals, while Volz swept the gold medal in the pole vault at both ACC meets this past season, giving him three for his career. Both Volz and Pocratsky earned All-America honors during both the indoor and outdoor seasons.
 
Younger student-athletes also flourished in 2019 under Cianelli’s leadership. Jacory Patterson won gold medals in the 400 during both the indoor and outdoor seasons, and he set four individual school records during his freshman season. Bashir Mosavel-Lo won the gold medal in the 800 at the ACC Outdoor Championships and earned All-America honors at the NCAA meet, while Miles Green won a gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the ACC’s outdoor meet.
 
The 2019 season continued the recent dominance of the track and field programs. In 2018, the program brought home its 17th event national title – and its first in running – when the distance medley relay team (Vincent Ciattei, Greg Chiles, Patrick Joseph and Neil Gourley) claimed the crown in convincing fashion at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships held in College Station, Texas. All of the program’s national titles have come under the direction of Cianelli.
 
In addition, in 2018, the men’s and women’s teams recorded top-15 finishes at both NCAA Championships, a rare occurrence in track and field. The national title helped the men’s team finish fourth at the NCAA’s indoor meet, which marked the program’s best finish ever, and it also came in 15^th at the outdoor meet behind Ciattei’s silver medal in the 1,500 – the second of two silver medals for Ciattei in 2018. And for only the second time in program history, the women’s team finished in the top 15 at both NCAA meets, coming in tied for 14^th at the indoor meet and 10^th at the outdoor meet. Both finishes marked the women’s best since 2010.
 
The 2018 season came on the heels of an incredible 2017 campaign. The men’s and women’s track and field teams combined to win three ACC team championships; the men’s team finished seventh at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships; the women’s team finished 11th at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships; and Irena Sediva captured the school’s 16th individual national championship, winning the javelin and joining former Tech standout and Olympian Queen Harrison as the only two females in program history to win at least two national titles. 
 
Of note, Tech’s student-athletes have enjoyed success on the international stage as well after competing under Cianelli. Six former Virginia Tech student-athletes have participated in the Summer Olympics, including three in the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Kristi Castlin, a seven-time All-American at Tech, won a bronze medal for the United States in the 100-meter hurdles and became the first Virginia Tech Olympian to win a medal. Former thrower Marcel Lomnicky competed in the hammer throw for Slovakia and former sprinter Darrell West ran in the 100-meter dash for Haiti at those same Games.

Harrison and Castlin rank as arguably the top female performers ever under Cianelli. In 2008, Harrison made history when she earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic team by finishing second in the 400-meter hurdles at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon. At age 19, Harrison was the second-youngest female track and field athlete in history to make the U.S. Olympic Team. She became the first Virginia Tech track and field athlete to represent any country at the Olympic Games and only the second Hokie to become an American Olympian in any sport following Bimbo Coles, who represented the United States in basketball in 1988.

NCAA AND ACC SUCCESS
• Since 2005, Virginia Tech track and field and cross country teams have combined to finish in the top five nationally four times, the top 10 nationally 12 times and the top 20 nationally on 28 occasions.
• The 2019 women’s team came in tied for 15^th at the NCAA Indoor Championships, which marked the second straight top-20 finish for the women at the NCAA indoor meet – a first for the program.
• The 2018 men’s team recorded the program’s top finish ever at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships, coming in fourth overall in large part because of the distance medley relay team’s national title. It marked the program’s fourth top-10 finish at the NCAA’s indoor meet since 2012
• The 2018 women’s team recorded the program’s second-best outdoor finish at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships when it came in 10th behind All-America performances from Pocratsky (1,500) and Rachel Baxter (the Hokies came in fifth in 2010). Tech’s women now have finished in the top 20 at the NCAA’s outdoor meet on five occasions under Cianelli.
• The Hokies have won their 17 individual national titles since joining the ACC for the 2004-05 academic year. Spyridon Jullien won the weight throw and hammer throw in back-to-back years (2005 and 2006) and both Queen Harrison and Alexander Ziegler won three national titles. Sediva won two national titles in the women’s javelin (2015 and 2017) in her three years at Tech, and then Ciattei, Chiles, Joseph and Gourley claimed the Hokies’ first national title in running in 2018.
• In 2010, Harrison became the first athlete in NCAA history to win national titles in the 100- and 400-meter hurdles at the same championship meet. Later that year, she won The Bowerman Award - the highest accolade given to the year’s best student-athlete in collegiate track and field.
• Castlin, the 2007 ACC women’s track and field Freshman of the Year, did not win an NCAA championship during her career, but she claimed the silver medal on three occasions, and she took gold in the 100 hurdles at the 2007 USA Junior Outdoor Championships and the Pan American Junior Championships. She competed at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in 2008 and 2012 and did not make the Olympic team, but she broke through with her performance in 2016.
• At the ACC level, Virginia Tech track and field and cross country teams have combined to win 16 team titles – 11 on the men’s side and five on the women’s side. The men’s team won or shared the indoor titles in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021, while claiming outdoor crowns in 2012, 2016, 2017 and 2019. The men’s team also won the ACC’s cross country team title in 2012. The women’s team swept the indoor and outdoor titles in 2007 and 2008, and then won the outdoor crown in 2017. 
• In 2017, both teams won the outdoor title in dramatic fashion. Both trailed entering the final event of the meet - the 4x400-meter relay – and both finished high enough to earn the requisite amount of points needed to claim the crowns. Sediva and Hanna Green led the women’s team, with Green winning gold medals in the 800 and 1,500, while Drew Piazza (800), Gourley (1,500) and Peter Seufer (10,000) all won gold on the men’s side.

COACH OF THE YEAR HONORS
• Cianelli received the ACC Men's Coach of the Year and the USTFCCCA Southeast Region Men's Coach of the Year following his team's performance during the 2021 indoor season.
• In 2019, Cianelli received the 2019 Southeast Region Men’s Coach of the Year honor following his team’s performance during the indoor season. The occasion marked the 16^th time in his 18 seasons at Tech in which he has won the award.
• Cianelli won three ACC Coach of the Year honors in 2017, claiming the ACC Men’s Indoor Coach of the Year award, along with the ACC Men’s Outdoor Coach of the Year and the ACC Women’s Outdoor Coach of the Year honors. Those give him 13 ACC Coach of the Year awards since the 2004-05 season – the year that the school joined the league.
• Cianelli’s staff also has received national acclaim during his time at Tech, as the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association named former distance and cross country coach Ben Thomas the 2017 National Men’s Assistant Coach of the Year for the indoor season. He became the first ACC assistant coach ever to win this award. His distance runners accounted for 21 points in leading the men’s team to a seventh-place finish at the 2017 NCAA Indoor Championships.
• Thomas also was selected ACC Cross Country Coach of the Year 2012 after leading the Hokies to the ACC team title. Tech finished 22nd at the NCAA Cross Country Championships that year.
• In addition, Bob Phillips, an All-American for Virginia Tech in the pole vault in 1980 and the man who coaches the Tech pole vaulters, received the USTFCCCA Assistant Coach of the Year honor for the Southeast Region in 2016 after his pole vaulters collected 38 of 39 possible points at the ACC Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Phillips won the same award in 2011. Since 2000, Phillips’ athletes have earned 47 All-America honors in the pole vault and he has coached a total of 44 conference champions at Virginia Tech, including 32 in the ACC.

ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE
• In 2019, Mosavel-Lo earned a spot on the 2019 Google Cloud Academic All-District Team as selected on by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) – an honor that recognizes student-athletes for their combined performances on the field and in the classroom.
• Torben Laidig, a pole vaulter with plans of going to medical school in his home country of Germany, earned first-team Google Cloud Academic All-America honors for men’s track and field/cross country in 2018 after graduating with a 3.94 grade-point average. He earned degrees in biology and biochemistry in May 2018.
• Ciattei earned second-team Google Cloud Academic All-America honors for men’s track and field/cross country in 2018 after graduating with a 3.77 grade-point average. He received his degree in engineering science and mechanics in May 2018.
• In 2018, the Virginia Tech men’s program swept the ACC Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award. Following the outdoor season, Laidig was named the ACC Men’s Outdoor Scholar-Athlete of the Year, while just a few months earlier, Ciattei earned the ACC Men’s Indoor Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
• In 2017, Green was named the ACC’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year twice - during both the indoor and outdoor season, becoming the first Tech female to win the award, and she recorded a 4.0 grade-point average in each of her final five semesters at Tech. On the men’s side, Laidig was named the ACC’s Indoor Track and Field Scholar-Athlete of the Year, giving the Hokies a sweep of the league’s top academic honors for indoor track.
• In 2014, the women’s cross country team earned USTFCCCA All-Academic recognition for the eighth year in a row. Frances Dowd, a member of that team, and Stephan Munz were named to the Capital One Academic All-America Team that same year.
• In 2013, Alexander Ziegler was named by the USTFCCCA as the National Student-Athlete of the Year, as well as a Capital One Indoor Academic first-team All-American.
• Dowd won the NCAA Elite 89 Award for the 2012 NCAA indoor season as the student-athlete with the highest GPA at the NCAA Championships.
• Kelly Phillips also received national recognition for her academic work, becoming a two-time Capital One Academic first-team All-American in 2011, and she also won the NCAA Elite 88 Award as the student-athlete with the highest GPA at the NCAA Championships.  
• Since 2004, 12 Virginia Tech track and field athletes have earned a total of 17 academic All-America honors.

PREVIOUS COACHING EXPERIENCE
• Prior to Tech, Cianelli was an assistant coach for 13 seasons at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. With the Mustangs, Cianelli worked with 19 Olympic and World Championship competitors, 27 NCAA national champions, 123 All-Americans and 95 conference champions. Cameron Taylor of New Zealand was a 1992 Olympian and All-American in the 200-meter race, and Tytti Reho won the 2000 NCAA national championship in the 800. In cross country, both the men’s and women’s teams won the 1995 Southwest Conference Championship and earned a spot at the NCAA Championships.
• During Cianelli’s 13 years at SMU, the track and field teams finished in the top 10 at the NCAA Championships 15 separate times.
• Cianelli served as the assistant women’s track and field and cross country coach at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo from 1985-88, and he helped the outdoor track and field teams to three straight runner-up finishes at the NCAA Division II Championships. He coached 13 All-Americans and one NCAA national champion while at Cal Poly SLO.
• Cianelli began his coaching career at San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara, California as the head boys and girls track and field coach from 1982-84. In three seasons, he coached seven junior national qualifiers in the heptathlon and decathlon.

PERSONAL
Cianelli and wife Ellen have two children, Mariah and Sebastian. Ellen Cianelli works at Virginia Tech as an early intervention specialist in Hokie Wellness. Mariah, a 2016 graduate of Virginia Tech, currently lives and works in Washington, D.C., while Sebastian graduated from Blacksburg High in 2017 and attends Radford University.