Thirteen-time Patriot League Coach of the Year Kevin Donner returns for his ninth season at the helm of the Bucknell men's and women's cross country and track and field program. During his successful tenure in Lewisburg, Donner has kept the Bison among the elite programs in the East.

Donner led the Bucknell women to another Patriot League championship in outdoor track and field 2008-09 as well as a pair of second-place finishes at the cross country and indoor championships. That excellent showing came on the heels of back-to-back Patriot League "Triple Crowns" in 2005-06 and 2006-07, and titles in cross country and indoor track in 2007-08.

Donner's men's team continued its recent resurgence in 2008-09, finishing second at the Patriot League Indoor Championships and Outdoor Championships, and fifth in cross country. Numerous athletes qualified for IC4A/ECAC berths, and six Bison qualified for the 2009 NCAA East Regional Championship in Greensboro, N.C., last May.

Donner's Gerhard Fieldhouse office is ringed with 17 Patriot League championship team trophies -- four in women's cross country, seven (in eight tries) in women's indoor track and field and six in women's outoor track and field.

The list of individual accomplishments among Bucknell's cross country and track and field athletes during Donner's first eight years with the Orange and Blue is staggering. Including all three seasons of competition, his Bison women's teams have crowned 87 Patriot League champions, 42 All-East performers and five NCAA qualifiers. On the men's side, Bucknell has claimed 39 conference champions, 30 All-East citations and three NCAA qualifiers under Donner.

In his very first season at Bucknell in 2001, Donner helped Theresa Dennis and Greg Costello qualify for the NCAA Cross Country Championships, and two more Bison returned to the national meet in 2006 when Leanna Nastase and Matt Forys earned bids.

The following spring, Forys went back to the NCAA Championships in outdoor track, where he qualified in the steeplechase. Record-setting pole vaulter Melanie Buczko made two NCAA appearances, first indoors in 2005 and then outdoors in 2006, and Maria Garcia made it to NCAAs in the hammer throw in 2006.

Before arriving at Bucknell in 2001, Donner, a native of Detroit, Mich., and a 1984 graduate of the University of Detroit, successfully transformed the Saint Francis (Pa.) program into one of the elite squads in the Northeast Conference. It was a banner campaign in 2000-01 for the Red Flash men's teams, as Saint Francis captured its second straight NEC cross country title, followed by indoor and outdoor track and field titles as well. The cross country unit placed third at the Mid-Atlantic Regional and vaulted to a Division I national ranking of 26th.

Donner also guided the Red Flash women to an NEC cross country title in 1997 and the men's and women's cross country teams to All-Academic Team honors in five consecutive seasons. He was cited as the conference coach of the year in cross country and track and field seven times, and in 2000, he was honored as the top men's cross country mentor in the Mid-Atlantic Region. All 81 men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field school records were shattered under Donner's watch.

Among the stellar individual achievements by his Red Flash student-athletes were a cross country All-American, 40 men's and women's NEC titles, 27 all-conference performers, nine U.S. Junior National qualifiers, two Canadian National qualifiers and six CoSIDA Academic All-Americans. One of his top distance athletes, Brian Sell, competed in the Olympic marathon in Beijing in 2008.

Prior to his stint at Saint Francis, Donner served as assistant women's cross country and track and field coach at Central Michigan University from 1993-95. There, Donner coached eight All-Mid-American Conference performers and one NCAA qualifier.

Following his graduation from Detroit, Donner established a new varsity program at his alma mater, becoming the school's first-ever women's coach. He served a nine-year stint at Detroit, where he coached 20 All-Midwestern Collegiate Conference student-athletes and guided the women's cross-country program to back-to-back MCC titles in 1986 and 1987.

A member of the NCAA Division I Coaches Associations for cross country and track and field, Donner took over the reins of a Bucknell program that has listed among the elite in the East for the better part of two decades. Bucknell's women's cross country team has captured seven of the past 11 Patriot League titles, while the men's team won three straight championships from 1990-92 and again from 1997-99.

Similarly successful on the track, the Bison women have earned nine of the last 11 Patriot League outdoor titles and 10 of the last 12 indoor championships. All told, the Bucknell men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field squads have captured 27 Patriot League championships in 19 years.

He currently resides in Lewisburg with his wife Amy, a statistics and mathematics instructor at Bucknell, and their three-year-old daughter, Jillianne.