Exactly 10 years after her last competition as a national-caliber athlete, Angie Taylor is again on the world track and field stage – this time as head coach of Team USA at the 2003 World Championships in Paris.

A former All-American hurdler and Olympic Trials heptathlon finalist, Taylor has been head coach at George Mason University for four years, where her teams have posted runner-up finishes in the Colonial Athletic Association. She has moved seamlessly from athlete to athlete activist to coach, drawing on her range of experiences in her approach to her first international head coaching position.

“You definitely take what you learned as an athlete and work it into your coaching ethics,” Taylor said. “It’s been enjoyable so far, I really love it. I love interacting with the athletes.”

That the athletes on the U.S. team in Paris range from age 17 to 42 makes her position even more rewarding and diverse. The 38-year-old Taylor says that her past as an athlete is a boon to her relationship with the older athletes, in particular. “They’re used to seeing me around, so whenever they have questions, it’s natural that they’ll come to me and say ‘what do you think about this; here’s a situation, what do you think I should do?’ Younger athletes may have had me as a coach on a junior team, so they think of me as Coach Angie.”

“Coach Angie” has been a presence on Team USA coaching staffs for six years. She previously was head manager for the U.S. delegation at the 1997 Pan American Junior Championships in Havana, as well as at the 2002 World Cup in Madrid. In 1998 she made her international coaching debut at the World Cup in Johannesburg, where the U.S. women won the team title. In 1999, she worked as an assistant manager at the World Indoor Championships in Maebashi, Japan.

Her duties related to the 2003 World Championships have taken her around the world to watch and interact with U.S. athletes at meets such as World Indoor Championships, USA vs. The World at the Penn Relays and Weltklasse Zurich, as well as at Team USA relay camps around the United States and Europe.

Taylor has liked what she has seen, both on the track and in the Athletes’ Village in Paris.

“I see a tremendous amount of team unity,” Taylor said. “It’s just great to see how the older athletes have taken younger athletes under their wings and shown them the ropes. We have lot of older athletes in the Village, so that helps a lot. There is a lot of team unity and team building. We have such a talented group of young people, we should be successful for years to come.”

Watching the team take shape before her eyes is one of the pleasures of her position. It’s a pleasure she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to experience were it not for her longtime service to USA Track & Field.

“I think it’s such a privilege and honor to be named to a staff,” said Taylor, a former member of USATF’s Athletes Advisory Committee. “To be named a head coach, it’s just an honor to have that opportunity. To be around the coaching staff and be around the athletes, you learn so much. It’s like a never-ending process.”