Hawaii head coach Bob Coolen recorded the 1,100th win of his career in a 7-5 victory over Cal State Bakersfield on Sunday in Las Vegas.
As the veteran Rainbow Wahine head coach celebrates his milestone victory, here are Five Fast Facts about him and his coaching career to this point.
1. The win was the first of the season for the Rainbow Wahine
The Rainbow Wahine gave Coolen the milestone victory in dramatic fashion, earning the W on Sunday in their fifth game of the season. Hawaii scored in four separate innings in the game, including an insurance run in the top of the 7th inning that came in very handy in the eventual 7-5 win.
2. He is in his 36th season as a head softball coach.
Prior to joining the staff at Hawaii, Coolen spent five years as head coach at Bentley University, earning 72 wins in five years as that program’s coach before moving to Hawaii. He spent two seasons as an assistant coach before being elevated to the head coaching role, which he has held for more than three decades ever since.
3. He is the second-longest-tenured head coach in the Hawaii athletic department.
Coolen is in his 31st season as the Rainbow Wahine head coach and is already one of only four coaches to cross the 1,000-win plateau solely at Hawaii. His tenure, though, is the second-longest of a coach in the UH athletic department – sailing coach Andy Johnson began his tenure leading that program a year before Coolen took the reins of the softball program.
4. He is a 6-time conference champion.
Coolen has guided the Rainbow Wahine softball program as part of multiple NCAA conferences, and has led the program to championships in both the Big West and the WAC. The squad won four WAC titles from 2003-2012, and owns two Big West championships – those were significantly spread out across two different membership terms, coming in 1994 and 2013.
5. He is a native of the Northeastern United States.
Although Coolen is virtually synonymous with the Hawaii program, he is actually a Massachusetts native who wound up on the island on a whim. He graduated from Connecticut’s Wesleyan University and received a Master’s degree from Boston University, and was inducted into the Brockton (MA) High School Hall of Fame in 2011 for both his achievements at the school and in his post-high school career in athletics.
