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Dale Cowper Position: Associate Head Coach / Recruiting Coord. / Throws Experience: 6th season at U of L Alma Mater: Western Michigan, '01

The 2011 U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's Southeast Region Indoor Women's Assistant Coach of the Year, Dale Cowper is in his sixth season as an assistant coach at the University of Louisville, where he has transformed the Cardinal throwers into a group that consistently competes and ranks among the nation's elite.

In his short time in Louisville, Cowper has coached the program's first back-to-back national champion, directed his throwers to All-America honors on 16 different occasions and guided them to 28 BIG EAST individual titles. The group also has garnered postseason honors consistently at the conference level.

Last season, under Cowper's tutelage, the throwers achieved arguably their best year in school history, playing a major role in the women capturing the league's indoor and outdoor titles. The group accounted for five BIG EAST event titles and eight All-America distinctions. The conclusion of the year meant the end of the D'Ana McCarty era, a year in which she was named the BIG EAST Female Outdoor Most Outstanding Field Performer of the Meet for winning three event titles. She became just the fourth athlete in BIG EAST history to win three event titles in one meet. She was just one of three athletes to advance to the national stage at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.

The success in 2010 mirrored that of the 2009 squad, collecting titles and awards at the BIG EAST and NCAA meets.

At the NCAA Indoor and NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, McCarty and Jere' Summers added to their already impressive resumes. McCarty won her second indoor weight throw national title, becoming the first repeat national champion in school history in 2010, while earning All-America honors. At the outdoor national championships, she collected two more All-America honors (ninth in the discus, 10th in the hammer throw), but Summers grabbed the spotlight there with a third-place finish in the hammer throw for the distinction.

On the conference level, it was a joint effort between the Cardinal men and women throwers. McCarty (weight throw), Summers (shot put) and Weston Banks (shot put) captured indoor titles, while Abdullah (shot put) and Summers (discus and hammer throw) were crowned at the outdoor event. For the third-straight year in the outdoor season, Summers won a pair of conference titles and was named the BIG EAST Women's Most Outstanding Field Performer.

In 2009, McCarty led the top-ranked throwing group, according to Thrower's Page, with her first national title, becoming the school's first female national champion. She captured the indoor weight throw title, collecting All-America honors in the process. Summers, the BIG EAST Women's Most Outstanding Field Performer, won the shot put and hammer throw titles at the league championships to assist in the women winning their second-straight BIG EAST outdoor title. She then captured the Mideast Regional discus title, leading the team to an eighth-place finish before advancing to the national championships. Andrew Hackney joined Summers on the national stage and earned All-America honors in the discus.

In his first two seasons, Cowper made an immediate impact on the program. The 2006-07 campaign witnessed the program's first indoor All-American in Arthur Turland, with four throwers advancing to the NCAA Championships. The group captured seven event titles at the league's indoor and outdoor championships, including Turland winning a pair of titles and earning 31 points to lead the 2007 men's outdoor team to its first conference track team title. A year later, he coached his second All-American at U of L in Summers, as she capped a memorable year with a ninth-place finish in the shot put at nationals to become only the program's third All-American and first in a throwing event for the Cardinal women. That season, the throws group amassed six conference titles, and Summers was named BIG EAST Outdoor Women's Field Performer of the Meet after winning the discus and shot put titles.

Cowper joined the Cardinals after serving four seasons as throws coach for Cal State Northridge, where he coached five NCAA Championships qualifiers and three Big West Conference champions. In the summer of 2006, Northridge freshman thrower Summers, who became a standout student-athlete, advanced to the World Junior Championships in the shot put and discus after second-place finishes in each event at the USA Junior Nationals. Under Cowper's guidance, she was crowned the 2006 Big West shot put champion and was named the 2006 Big West Freshman of the Year.

While coaching at Northridge, where he was promoted to associate head coach in the fall of 2005, the team registered strong conference finishes, highlighted by two women's team titles (2004 and 2006) and two men's team titles (2004 and 2005). The women's team also earned runner-up finishes in 2003 and 2005, while the men's team was conference runner-up in 2003. The 2006 women's team received 61 points from the throwers en route to the title, with a 1-2-3 finish in the hammer and a 1-2 finish in the shot put.

Along with Summers, two league champions, an All-American and a national championships finalist at Northridge, Cowper also coached Laura Sauau, a Big West Conference champion (shot put) and a 2004 NCAA Outdoor Championships qualifier. She was also the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation 20-pound weight throw champion and a 2003 NCAA Indoor Championships finalist.

Cowper's coaching experience began in the spring of 2002 as the throws coach at Portage Northern High in Portage, Mich. A native of Marlette, Mich., Cowper is a 2001 graduate of Western Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's degree in education. While at WMU, he earned All-America honors in the weight throw in 2001 and the hammer in 2002, was a four-time qualifier for the NCAA Championships, posted more than 30 NCAA qualifying marks, was four-time team MVP and still owns school records in the weight throw and the hammer. He also owns two IAAF Top 20 rankings in the weight throw.

Cowper and his wife, Constance, have two sons, Zachary and Logan.