Cohen Eager to Build on Banner Year

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Watching the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships on television last month, Robby Andrews marveled at the late kick that clinched the victory for University of Virginia graduate student Shane Cohen in the men’s 800-meter race. It was a tactic for which Andrews was renowned, and moments later he posted this on the social media platform X:

More than a decade earlier, as a UVA underclassman, Andrews had won two NCAA titles in the 800m in similar fashion, using his trademark kick to prevail indoors in March 2010 and outdoors in June 2011. After seeing Andrews’ tweet, a mutual friend passed along Cohen’s phone number. Andrews texted Cohen, and they spoke on the phone the next day.

“That was super cool, to hear from him,” Cohen said.

“I congratulated him, thanked him for bringing the victory back to Virginia,” said Andrews, a former Olympian who’s now coaching in Boulder, Colo. “It was such an exciting time, not just for Virginia, but for track & field as a whole. I feel like we haven’t seen an exciting 800-meter talent like that in a really long time, probably since Clayton Murphy. So it was just really cool as a fan of the sport and of course as a fan of Virginia.”

UVA head coach Vin Lananna was in charge of the program at Oregon in 2010 when Andrews surged past the Ducks’ Andrew Wheating to win the 800m by .01 seconds at the NCAA indoor meet. So Cohen’s kick was nothing Lananna hadn’t seen before. “There is absolutely a similarity in the way [Cohen and Andrews] run and the way they figured out how to utilize that finish,” Lananna said.

The first Cavalier to capture an NCAA title in the men’s 800m was Paul Ereng, who won indoors in 1988. Ereng went on to win two more NCAA titles, both outdoors (1988 and ’89).

Unlike Andrews, who enrolled at the University as a heralded recruit, Cohen arrived in Charlottesville unburdened by others’ expectations. He transferred to UVA last summer after graduating from the University of Tampa, where he’d competed in track and cross country at the NCAA’s Division II level.

Until Cohen entered the transfer portal, Lananna knew nothing about him. “He was off the radar,” Lananna said. “He reached out to us.”

At Tampa, Cohen had placed ninth in the 800m at NCAAs in 2021 and sixth in 2022 before struggling with an injury during the 2023 outdoor season. The COVID-19 pandemic had left him with extra eligibility, and he wanted to compete as a graduate student in a Division I program. Cohen narrowed his list to UVA, Virginia Tech and Duke, but never made it to Blacksburg or Durham, N.C.

He committed to Virginia after visiting Charlottesville. “I loved the guys on the team,” Cohen recalled. “I was like, This the culture I want to be a part of. This is the family I want to be with,’ and I think the people I’ve met along the way—from teammates to professors to my classmates—these are bonds that I’m probably always gonna have. It was definitely, I think, one of the better decisions I’ve ever made.”

Cohen, who graduated from Tampa with a bachelor’s degree in finance, is halfway through a two-year master’s program in UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He’s back in his hometown of Huntingdon Valley, Pa., this summer, doing a remote internship with a Washington, D.C.-based data analytics company.

Huntingdon Valley is about 20 miles northeast of Philadelphia. Cohen attended Lower Moreland High School, where as an athlete he distinguished himself more as a guard in basketball than as a runner in track.

“I had interest from a few Division II, Division III schools, but I really didn’t want to run [in college],” Cohen said. “I thought my days of running were over. I wanted to play basketball. I love basketball. It’s still probably my favorite sport. But when you’re 5-8, it’s pretty tough.”

He attracted the interest of several Division III hoops programs, but none seemed like a good fit, Cohen said, and so he enrolled at Tampa in the summer of 2019 with no plans to compete in intercollegiate athletics. He quickly found that he missed playing sports, however, and in the spring of his freshman year he joined Tampa’s track & field team as a walk-on.

The pandemic cut short his first outdoor season, but Cohen returned to Tampa for the 2020-21school year and ran cross country that fall to get in shape for track. By the time he graduated last spring, he’d established himself as a top-flight runner, and the combination of his times, his character and his academic prowess convinced the Cavaliers’ coaching staff that Cohen would be an excellent addition to their program.

“He is a positive, can-do kind of person, and he’s exactly the type of student-athlete who we gravitate towards,” Lananna said. “It was really a no-brainer in terms of Virginia and Shane Cohen.”

Cohen has two seasons of eligibility remaining: one in cross country and one in indoor track, which Tampa didn’t offer. Whether he’ll compete for the Wahoos in 2024-25 has yet to be determined. He might turn pro and train in Charlottesville while completing work on his master’s.

“Obviously this past season’s been a pretty unforgettable one, so it’s essentially just trying to figure out what makes the most sense financially,” Cohen said.

He’s been weighing his options in conversations with Lananna, a legend in the track & field world.

“The only thing I ever do is make certain that I understand what he’s trying to accomplish,” Lananna said, “and then I try to be a sounding board for him to try to help him to figure out what’s in his best interest. That’s really the only thing that matters here. Shane is going to be successful regardless of what he does and no matter what he does. So I’m excited to see where his next step leads him.”

After running indoor track for the first time as a collegian last winter, Cohen steadily improved over the course of the outdoor season. In May, he placed third in the 800m at the ACC meet—his time of 1:46.89 was then a personal best—to help the UVA men win the conference championship outright for the first time.

Then came the NCAA East Regional in Lexington, Ky., where Cohen used his signature kick to place second with another personal best (1:45.36), thus qualifying for the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Ore. His confidence level was high when he arrived in Eugene, Cohen said, and his faith in himself proved well-founded in the 800m final.

As is often the case, Cohen found himself in last place midway through the race, but his late surge carried him to victory as he posted yet another PR (1:44.97).

To see Cohen well behind his fellow runners can be anxiety-inducing, Lananna acknowledged. “It’s certainly not the way I’d prefer that he run, but it’s what he is and how he does it, and our job as coaches is to be sure that he’s really good and he’s really confident in whatever strategy he employs.”

Cohen was among the UVA contingent that remained in Oregon for the U.S. Olympic Trials. He posted two more PRs at that meet in Eugene—1:44.92 in the semifinal and 1:44.65 in the final—and gained invaluable knowledge in the process.

In the final, Cohen rallied from last place to finish sixth. His time was the second-fastest in UVA history, behind Ereng’s 1:43.16.

“That Olympic Trials final was absolutely insane,” Andrews said. “If that race was any slower, I think Shane gets in the top three. His [surge in the] last 100, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

Cohen said that “hitting the Olympic standard, running a personal best, and still not making the [U.S.] team, it was a bittersweet feeling. My lack of experience racing at that high of a level was definitely exploited for sure, I think. So I think if I run that race again I think there is a different outcome, for the better. I think it’s just all part of the learning curve.”

Andrews agreed.  “Shane is still so young to this. He’s going to have a lot of learning to do, and you can’t learn that in practice. You can’t learn that in the comfort of your own track. You’ve got to get in the races and you’ve got to take your licks and learn what you can from it. So as much as it’s going to sting, he’s going to learn from this, and he’s hopefully not going to make those mistakes again, because he really does have a tremendous gift.”

Cohen said the Olympic Trials were “just a bigger version of the [NCAA] meet. I felt the coolest thing was you’re warming up next to Olympians and you’re walking past Olympians and you’re seeing all these guys that you’ve always watched on YouTube. These guys that you’ve looked up to, they’re in your race or they’re walking right by you. So I think it was just definitely cool to have all that, but you’re there for a reason too, so once the races started coming around it’s was like, ‘Lock in. You deserve to be here.’ ”

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