UAlbany's Roberto Vives To Receive Irv Mondschein Coaching Award

EW YORK – The University at Albany men’s and women’s indoor track teams are spending Friday and Saturday competing at the Armory in New York City at one of the biggest meets of the year, the Armory Collegiate Invitational. While they are down there, UAlbany Director of Track & Field and Cross Country Roberto Vives will be presented with the Irv Mondschein Coaching award during the opening ceremonies at 12:45 p.m. on Saturday, February 8. Since its inaugural presentation in 2002, others who have won this award include Villanova’s Macrus O’Sullivan and Gina Procaccio (2013), Wisconsin’s Mick Byrne (2012), Georgetown’s Frank Gagliano (2009), Ohio State’s Russ Rogers (2006), and Irv Mondschein himself (2004). Both days of competition, including the opening ceremony and presentation of the Mondschein Award, can be streamed live via runnerspace.com. From the Collegiate Invitational program: “Roberto Vives, the head track coach at Albany for three decades, is the winner of this year’s Irv Mondschein Coaching Award. Vives has won nearly 50 conference team championships – men and women, indoors/outdoors and cross country – in his extraordinary career for the Great Danes. Raised in the Bronx, of Puerto Rican heritage, Vives wasted little time discovering his calling as a coach. A star hurdler at Cardinal Hayes High School, he also began helping on the coaching side by his senior season. After graduating from Seton Hall, where he competed in the hurdles and the decathlon, Vives began his formal coaching career back at Cardinal Hayes. He later coached at the Bronx High School of Science, CCNY, and Lehman College before settling in at Albany, where he has been since 1985.”