Phil Kopinski will serve as an assistant coach for the CUC men's and women's track & field team, beginning with the 2019-20 season. He will coach the distance runners.
Kopinski's time at CUC as the head coach (2014-19) saw the Cougars gain recognition on the national level, with 14 of his athletes competing at the national meet. In 2018, he took six athletes to the outdoor national championships, with the women's 4 x 400-meter relay team winning All-American honors and Simone Wilson winning an individual All-American honor in the 400-meter hurdles. In 2019, Kayla Armstrong won three All-American honors between indoors and outdoors. Jessica Wilson also won an All-American honor in the hammer throw at the 2019 outdoor nationals.
Named the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference's Coach of the Year for the outdoor season in 2018, Kopinski led the CUC women to a #34 final ranking in Division III by the United States Track & Field/Cross-Country Coaches Association. In 2019, the Cougars' final ranking was #23 with a peak of #15 during the season. Individually, his athletes earned 19 women's conference champions and seven men's conference champions.
Kopinski came to Concordia in the summer of 2013 after 12 years at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago. Among his duties was resurrecting the Scarlet Hawks’ track and field program in 2003 as a club team after the program had been dormant since the 1970s. The program was later raised to varsity status, and the inaugural season in 2011 resulted in finishes of sixth (men) and seventh (women) places for IIT in the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference (CCAC) championships.
In subsequent years, Kopinski coached nine individuals in 12 events and one relay team for the NAIA National Championships. Additionally, Kopinski coached IIT’s first track All-American in the 3,000-meter steeplechase (Abby Jahn, 2012).
A 1994 graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago with a B.S. in kinesiology, Kopinski worked as a certified athletic trainer for the Winston-Salem Icehawks and Muskegon Fury professional hockey teams as well as the Chicago Rush arena football team. In 2001, Kopinski joined the IIT staff as an ATC and served in that capacity until 2013, along with his coaching responsibilities.
Kopinski is married to Joan, and the couple has three sons – Cooper, Shane and Bryce.
