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Head Coach Dave Klarmann heads into his 10th season as head coach of the Tar Heels as the ninth winningest active NCAA Division I men's lacrosse head coach with a 92-46 career record, good for winning percentage of .677. Since the start of his Tar Heel tenure in the summer of 1990, Klarmann has proved himself year-in and year-out to be at the top of the NCAA lacrosse coaching ladder. The numbers simply don't lie. And with a veteran club returning for the first season of the New Millennium, chances are that Klarmann will lead the Tar Heels to another outstanding season in 2000. During Klarmann's first nine years on the job in Chapel Hill, Carolina won five ACC Tournament championships and four regular-season ACC titles. During that same time frame, Carolina advanced to the NCAA Tournament seven times and was ranked in the Top Five teams in the nation on five occasions at the end of the season. Three times Carolina has reached the prestigious NCAA Final Four. In 1991 as the rookie head coach of the Carolina lacrosse program Klarmann provided expert tactical and emotional leadership in piloting UNC to a 16-0 record, a mark that equaled the second best single-season mark in the history of college lacrosse. He also led the Tar Heels to the Atlantic Coast Conference championship, a #1 ranking in the final United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association poll and the NCAA title. In doing so, he joined former Johns Hopkins head mentor Don Zimmerman as the only two coaches to lead their teams to NCAA championships in their initial seasons as head mentors. Klarmann turned in another outstanding coaching job in 1992. That Carolina team finished 12-3 overall and claimed Carolina's fifth successive Atlantic Coast Conference title. The Heels made the semifinal round of the NCAA Tournament before losing to eventual national champion Princeton Klarmann continued to work his coaching magic in 1993 as the Tar Heels went 14-2 and finished first in the USILA poll for the second time in three years. Klarmann's team won the school's sixth straight ACC championship and reached the NCAA Tournament final before losing a 13-12 decision to Syracuse in the final 10 seconds of play. In 1994, Klarmann faced a major rebuilding task after losing eight starters and 15 lettermen off the 1993 team. After starting the season 1-3, Carolina rallied to finish 10-5 overall, rank #4 in the USILA poll, earn a 15th straight NCAA Tournament bid and win a seventh successive ACC championship. Klarmann's 1995 squad battled adversity both on and off the field after the preseason murder of beloved sophomore midfielder Kevin Reichardt. Faced with enormous emotional challenges, the squad persevered to finish with a 9-7 record. The team recorded victories over three nationally-ranked opponents, including a win over #3 Maryland in the ACC tournament. Carolina made the ACC Tournament finals for the seventh straight year and merited a 16th successive trip to the NCAA Championship. The 1996 campaign proved to be one of Klarmann's shining moments. He molded a veteran team into an outstanding squad that finished with a 12-5 record. The Tar Heels reached the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament and won their eighth ACC championship in nine years. In 1997, Klarmann coached what was arguably the most snakebitten team in college lacrosse history. The Heels finished 6-7, their first losing campaign since 1967. Four one-goal losses proved to be the death knell for the post-season chances of a UNC team. In 1998 the Tar Heels returned to the NCAA Tournament for the seventh time under Klarman, where they were eliminated by Duke in a close match. The Heels finished the regular season at .500 with a 7-7 record. Klarmann, the chief assistant coach to Willie Scroggs at UNC from 1980-90, was named to the head coach's post on July 17, 1990, by Carolina Athletic Director John Swofford. The goal was to find someone who could continue the excellent tradition of Carolina lacrosse. In Klarmann, there's no doubt they found their man. Klarmann, who has been tapped as the 1991, 1993, 1994 and 1996 Atlantic Coast Conference Coach-of-the-Year, replaced Willie Scroggs as Carolina's head coach. Scroggs, who coached the Tar Heels to three NCAA championships and six Atlantic Coast Conference titles in his 12 years at the helm of the UNC program, retired from coaching on May 26, 1990, to devote time to his family and to his post as associate athletic director for games operations and outdoor facilities at UNC. Swofford said upon hiring Klarmann, "Ultimately, we came to the decision that the best individual to continue the tradition that had evolved over the past 12 years of lacrosse here at Carolina was right here in our program." Klarmann, a native of Wantagh, N.Y., came to Carolina for a second time as an assistant coach in 1979 during Scroggs' second season at the helm of the UNC program. In his first seven seasons at North Carolina, Klarmann served as a part-time assistant coach, but in the fall of 1986, he became a full-time assistant coach along with serving as the athletic department's assistant games operations manager. He was the first full-time assistant men's lacrosse coach in UNC history. Klarmann's coaching duties as an assistant centered around the close defense and the extra-man or man-down defense. From 1985-90, he was also assistant director of the Carolina Lacrosse Camp. For the past nine years, he has been the director of the Carolina Lacrosse Camp held on the UNC campus each summer. A 1969 alumnus of Wantagh High School on Long Island, Klarmann, 48, served in the United States Army as a specialist fourth class for three years before attending Nassau Community College in Garden City, N.Y. While playing at Nassau in 1973-74, he was named a first-team junior college All-America on defense in 1974. He then transferred to Carolina where he graduated in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in education. He later worked on a master's degree at Carolina in Latin American Studies. As a player, he was a second-team All-America defenseman in 1976 and he played in the USILA North-South all-star game following his senior year. He captained the 1976 UNC team and was the winner of the Turnbull Trophy that year as the team's most valuable player. That Carolina team was the first in school history to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Since then, Klarmann has been a part of four national championship teams at UNC as an assistant and head coach. After graduating from Carolina and before returning to the staff here, he was an assistant lacrosse coach at Duke University for one year and a graduate assistant in the Department of History at UNC for one year. Klarmann was married in October 1984 to Julia Liles Klarmann. The couple lives in Pittsboro, N.C., with their two children. Bart, 12, is an avid baseball and soccer player in Pittsboro youth leagues and he loves playing Nintendo in his spare time. Bart is a sixth-grader at Pittsboro Elementary School. Helen is now 10 and is a fourth-grader at Pittsboro Elementary. She loves to paint and tap dance and plays the piano. She also has a particular fondness for horses. THE DAVE KLARMANN FILE
Klarmann Year-by-Year at Carolina
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