Omar Brown is in his second season as an assistant coach with the William & Mary track & field teams, and making an immediate impact for the Tribe. Brown will coach the sprinters and hurdlers for both the men's and women's programs, and will also assist with all recruiting and administrative areas of running W&M's nationally-recognized program.
In his first year in Williamsburg, Brown coached both the men and the women to breaking three of the four school records in the 4x400m relay. Indoors, both teams earned All-East honors in school record time, and outdoors, the women added another school record while the men won the CAA title in the 4x400m for just the second time since 1985. Individually, Victoria Gersch broke the school record both indoors and outdoors at 200m and also added the record in the 400m indoors, while Susanna Maisto finished sixth in the ECAC 500m indoors and at 400m outdoors as well. Duncan Goodrich broke W&M's school record indoors at 400m, and outdoors, finished second in that event at the CAA Championships, just the second man since 1985 to earn all-conference honors in the 400m. Theo Chambers also was named All-CAA after taking second in the 200m, the first man in school history since 1985 to finish top-three in the 200m.
The start of the 2019-20 season has kept to the same form for Brown's athletes. In the first three meets, Carly Swierbut broke W&M's freshman record in the 400m twice, resetting a mark that had stood since 1984, and Daniel Layton added the fastest metric 60m hurdles mark ever for a Tribe freshman as well as the fastest 60m hurdles ever in a heptathlon for W&M. Gersch, Maisto, Swierbut, and Gabby Runge have dominated the 4x400m, running top-10 marks in school history every time out, as well as earning ECAC qualifying marks individually in the 400m and the 500m. Chambers has turned in career-best times in both the 400m and the 500m, while Matt Chabala has done the same in the 200m and the 60m.
Brown had already made a name for himself in the coaching ranks before coming to W&M from the state of Florida, where he coached professionally for seven years with the Modern Sprints Track Club. As the head coach, he recruited and trained numerous professional and post-collegiate aspiring professional athletes for world-class competitions, including the IAAF World Championships, the Diamond League series, and the Olympics. Brown has coached athletes to multiple Olympic and World Championship medals, including gold in the women's 200m at the 2011 IAAF World Outdoor Championships and in the women's 60m at the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships, as well as bronze in the women's 100m at the 2012 London Olympics and silver in the women's 4x100m relay at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Brown has also coached at Montverde Academy in Florida since 2015, where he helped numerous athletes to advance through the district, regional, and state championship meets.
Before his coaching career, Brown was an elite athlete, winning several international medals. He won silver in the 200m and bronze in the 100m at the 1999 World Youth Championships, and ran on Jamaica's gold-medal 4x100m relay. In 2006, he won gold in the 200m at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, leading to a world ranking of No. 9 by Track & Field News magazine. In between those years, he ran at the University of Arkansas, where he still ranks second all-time in the indoor 200m dash and fifth in the indoor 60m dash, as well as seventh in the outdoor 400m and eighth in the outdoor 200m. Brown was a three-time All-American for the Razorbacks during the 2004-05 season, taking fifth in the 200m and seventh in the 4x400m relay indoors, and finishing eighth in the 200m outdoors.
Brown graduated from the University of Arkansas with his degree in Information Systems in 2007, and earned his Masters of Science in Sports Management from Liberty University in 2018. He holds a USA Weight Lifting Certification, as well as IAAF Level 5 and USAT&F Level 3 Sprints Certifications. He married his wife, eight-time Olympic medalist Veronica Campbell Brown, in 2007, and the pair reside in Williamsburg with their daughter, Avianna.
