Sheldon Blockburger - Indoor Track Coach - Long Beach State University Athletics

Sheldon Blockburger

Title:
Assistant Coach - Pole Vault/Multi-Events
Email:
Sheldon.Blockburger@csulb.edu

Sheldon Blockburger joined the Long Beach State coaching staff in September of 2021, marking the 2022 indoor and outdoor seasons as his first year with the Beach. He serves as the Pole Vault and Multi-Events Coach.

A three-time West Region Assistant Coach of the Year, Blockburger brings a lot of experience to LBSU after 20-plus years as an Assistant Coach with Arizona, USC, and Cal Poly. He also runs his own development organization, Blockburger Athletics, which he started in 2020.

He joins the Beach after his second stint with Arizona, a three-year span from 2018-20. In 2019, he helped guide his High Jump athletes to All-American status in both the indoor and outdoor seasons as well as coaching the USATF Junior Long Jump National Champion.

Blockburger spent three seasons with the Trojans as the assistant coach for jumps and multi-events. In his first two seasons as USC’s jumps coach, his athletes have earned a total of seven All-America honors (4 indoor and 3 outdoor), three individual Pac-12 titles and seven MPSF indoor titles. In his first two seasons as a USC assistant coach his athletes posted seven school all-time top 10 marks. Blockburger was named the 2017 Men’s Assistant Coach of the Year for the West Region during the indoor season as he guided Randall Cunningham to the high jump title and Dominic Smallwood to the long jump title at the MPSF Championships.

During his first 10 seasons as the combined events/jumps coach at Arizona, he guided athletes to 11 NCAA titles and 16 Pac-12 conference titles. He had 39 athletes garner All-America honors during his time at Arizona. In 2015, Blockburger guided Pau Tonnesen to the Pac-12 Decathlon title and to a second-place finish at the NCAA Championships with a school-record 8,247 points.

Prior to coaching at Arizona, Blockburger coached nine seasons at Cal Poly where he led athletes to 14 Big West outdoor titles and two NCAA titles. He coached 15 All-Americans while at Cal Poly.

Many of the athletes Blockburger has coached have gone on to achieve international success, including 2012 Olympic Silver medalist Brigetta Barrett in the high jump.

Blockburger was an outstanding decathlete himself, placing second in 1989 and third in 1990 at the USA Track & Field Championships. He also placed third in the decathlon at the 1991 Pan American games in Cuba. He posted a personal best in the decathlon on 8,301 points at the USA Championships on June 13, 1990.

Blockburger attended Orange Coast College and won the 1985 California Junior College decathlon title. He then transferred to LSU and placed fifth in the decathlon at the 1987 NCAA Championships. He graduated from Newport Harbor High in 1983 and won CIF division titles in both the long jump and triple jump during his senior season, one year after joining the track and field team.

Blockburger and his wife, Cindy, return to their home state of California where their children, Johnnie and Alyssa, compete at USC.