Lessons From One Of The Youngest Coaches In The NCAA: Coach Ian Moini + Insights From Coaching NCAA 5k Champ Parker Wolfe

The Running Effect Podcast

Today on the podcast is one of the youngest, most successful coaches in the NCAA, Coach Ian Moini.

Entering his fourth season coaching the Tar Heels, Moini has helped turn the program into one of the best distance running programs in the country, finishing fifth in the Program of the Year rankings by the USTFCCCA. He has directly coached four Tar Heels to 10 individual ACC championships. His tenure has also featured team success, such as the Tar Heels winning their first ACC Cross Country Championship since 1985 and their first ACC Indoor Championship since 1996, while achieving their best finish, 5th place, at the NCAA Indoor Championships since 1973.

Moini has been a part of rewriting history, with six current school distance records being set since his arrival in Chapel Hill. Eight of the top 10 outdoor 5,000m performers have been coached by Moini in the past three years. In his third year at Chapel Hill, Moini coached Parker Wolfe to become North Carolina's first 5,000m national champion at the 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championship.

Ian Moini joined the UNC track and field and cross country coaching staff prior to the 2021-22 season. He works primarily with the Tar Heel men's and women's distance runners. In 2022, he was helped sign the No. 5-ranked men's distance recruiting class in the nation.

Moini is a 2021 UNC graduate with a bachelor's degree in education and a minor in coaching education. He was a member of the varsity cross country and track teams at Carolina.

He utilized his last semester of college to volunteer coach at Eastern Michigan University in 2021. While there, he worked with the men's and women's distance runners. The men's team won the Indoor MAC Championship and Baldvin Magnusson placed seventh in the 3000m at the NCAA Indoor Championships.

In today's conversation, we go into Ian's journey as a coach and as a successful athlete himself to get to this point. We dive into his years as a coach and the lessons he's learned along the way!

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The podcast graphic was done by the talented: Xavier Gallo

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