Mike Bartolina enters his second season with Louisiana Tech’s men’s and women’s track and field programs. Bartolina has over 20 years of coaching experience at the collegiate level, coaching at UTRGV, Ranger College (Ranger, Texas), McNeese State, Texas A&M, Southeastern Louisiana, Alabama and Barton College (Great Bend, Kansas). During his first season in Ruston, he helped coach Bulldog Denzel Harper to a C-USA championships and All-American honors in the long jump.
Bartolina’s coaching prowess in the pole vault led him to serve as the pole vaulting coach at Alabama from 2016-18, helping Lakan Taylor become Alabama’s first NCAA women’s pole vault champion in 2017. Under Bartolina’s tutelage, Taylor and men’s pole vaulter Will Herrscher also combined to tally eight indoor and eight outdoor marks that rank inside the top 10 in the Crimson Tide’s men’s and women’s all-time pole vault lists.
Riding the contribution of Taylor’s national championship in the pole vault, Alabama’s women’s team finished in third place at the 2017 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships -- its highest finish in 23 years. In 2018, Bartolina helped guide the Crimson Tide’s men’s team to its first SEC Track and Field Championship in 47 years as well as winning the Men’s NCAA National Program of the Year Award for the combined highest placing teams in cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field.
Prior to joining the Alabama coaching staff, Bartolina spent 11 years (2005-16) as an assistant coach at Southeastern Louisiana, where he helped produce 13 regional performances, one national qualifying mark and one All-America honor (Avery Sorapuru in the men’s long jump in 2006). Southeastern Louisiana notched three Southland Conference championships during Bartolina’s 11-year tenure in Hammond, Louisiana.
Bartolina’s two years as a head coach came at Ranger College (1999-2000), where he helped lead his team to a pair of second-place finishes at the 1999 NJCAA indoor and outdoor track and field championships. Bartolina’s athletes won 16 NJCAA individual event championships during his two seasons as head coach.
He also served as an assistant coach at Texas A&M (2003-04), McNeese State (2000-02) and UTRGV (1998-99).
Bartolina has also coached athletes who have competed in multiple Olympics, World Championships and Pan American Games over the past 20 years. His athletes hold national records in five different countries, coaching at least one athlete at every U.S. Olympic Trials since 1996.
Bartolina earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from The University of Central Oklahoma in 1992 and 1996, respectively. Bartolina competed as a pole vaulter for Oklahoma State’s track and field team from 1987-90.
