At Tampa, Cohen had placed ninth in the 800m at NCAAs in 2021 and sixth in 2022 before struggling with an injury during the 2023 outdoor season. The COVID-19 pandemic had left him with extra eligibility, and he wanted to compete as a graduate student in a Division I program. Cohen narrowed his list to UVA, Virginia Tech and Duke, but never made it to Blacksburg or Durham, N.C.
He committed to Virginia after visiting Charlottesville. “I loved the guys on the team,” Cohen recalled. “I was like, This the culture I want to be a part of. This is the family I want to be with,’ and I think the people I’ve met along the way—from teammates to professors to my classmates—these are bonds that I’m probably always gonna have. It was definitely, I think, one of the better decisions I’ve ever made.”
Cohen, who graduated from Tampa with a bachelor’s degree in finance, is halfway through a two-year master’s program in UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He’s back in his hometown of Huntingdon Valley, Pa., this summer, doing a remote internship with a Washington, D.C.-based data analytics company.
Huntingdon Valley is about 20 miles northeast of Philadelphia. Cohen attended Lower Moreland High School, where as an athlete he distinguished himself more as a guard in basketball than as a runner in track.
“I had interest from a few Division II, Division III schools, but I really didn’t want to run [in college],” Cohen said. “I thought my days of running were over. I wanted to play basketball. I love basketball. It’s still probably my favorite sport. But when you’re 5-8, it’s pretty tough.”
He attracted the interest of several Division III hoops programs, but none seemed like a good fit, Cohen said, and so he enrolled at Tampa in the summer of 2019 with no plans to compete in intercollegiate athletics. He quickly found that he missed playing sports, however, and in the spring of his freshman year he joined Tampa’s track & field team as a walk-on.
The pandemic cut short his first outdoor season, but Cohen returned to Tampa for the 2020-21school year and ran cross country that fall to get in shape for track. By the time he graduated last spring, he’d established himself as a top-flight runner, and the combination of his times, his character and his academic prowess convinced the Cavaliers’ coaching staff that Cohen would be an excellent addition to their program.
“He is a positive,…