Dason Phelps - Track & Field Coach - Kansas State University Athletics

Dason Phelps

Title:
Assistant Track & Field (Pole Vault)
Email:
dphelps@kstatesports.com
Phone:
(785) 532-6567

Dason Phelps enters his second year as the pole vault coach for K-State Track and Field. Along with his primary duties of training the pole vaulters, he will assist head coach Cliff Rovelto in the speed and power events.

This past season, Phelps helped Megan Vanderpool crack the program top-10 both in indoors and outdoors.

Phelps joins K-State after spending the past two years as a graduate assistant coach with the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota. During his time with the Marauders, Phelps designed and implemented the training regimens for the men and women pole vaulters, as well as assisted in the development of multi-event athletes – specifically in the shot put, long jump and pole vault. He was a part of three Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) women’s team champion squads – indoor/outdoor: 2013 | outdoor: 2014.

Under Phelps tutelage, several athletes have excelled including freshmen vaulters Davina Carr and Nico Fonzi. Carr, who was also an NCAA provisional qualifier and All-Academic Team honoree in 2014, tied for second in the pole vault at the NSIC Outdoor Championships, while Fonzi tied for fifth on the men’s side. In the multis, Phelps assisted in coaching two athletes to considerable heights: freshman Hwang Lee, who set the program heptathlon record, and Molly McDonald, who was an NCAA provisional qualifier last year in both the pentathlon and heptathlon.

Overall, Phelps possesses well over a decade of coaching experience, including serving as an assistant coach/recruiting specialist at Paradise Valley Community College (PVCC) and as the pole vault coach at Pinnacle High School in Phoenix from 2005-09, where he coached the 2007 4A-I boys pole vault state champion.

Along with experience coaching at the collegiate and high school level, Phelps has also been affiliated with SkyAthletics, a pole vault club in Phoenix, since 1999, as well as the Altius Track Club summer camps run by Olympic gold medalist vaulter Stacy Dragila since 2010.

For SkyAthletics, Phelps coached the year-round pole vaulters, as well as contributed by coaching weekend camps/clinics and the week-long camps held every summer. Through his affiliation with the club, he has assisted in the development of over 20 male and female state champion pole vaulters.

At the Altius summer camps, Phelps has served as an assistant coach for the past three years, including being a lead coach at the camps held at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California.

He has also been a member of the National Staff at the annual Reno Pole Vault Summit since 2006.

Competitively, Phelps was a two-time National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Champion while attending PVCC. He is the only pole vaulter in junior college history to have ever cleared 18 feet and is the NJCAA outdoor record holder in the event at 5.49m/18-00.00.

A native of Phoenix, Arizona, Phelps received his B.A. in psychology from Arizona State in December of 2011.