Celebrating Leaney Field and Bolstorff Court

Some 200 alumni and friends returned to campus to celebrate Coach John Leaney in September. Leaney joined the college as head men’s soccer coach in 1986. Two years later, he became coach of the women’s program. Under his tenure, the women’s soccer team won the 1998 NCAA Division III National Championship, the only NCAA team title in the college’s history. The team finished second the following year.

Leaney guided his teams to seventeen MIAC championships and twenty-two national playoff berths, while coaching nineteen All-Americans and a MIAC Player of the Year fourteen times. He retired from coaching in 2009. Leaney was honored during a day-long event that included an alumni pick-up game, a dinner reception, and a varsity women’s soccer match on Macalester’s Leaney Field, now named in his honor.

The dedication of the Alumni Gymnasium’s Bolstorff Court, named in honor of Coach Douglas Bolstorff, was celebrated at the Hall of Fame Banquet and induction ceremony during October’s Mac Fest.

Bolstorff was a coach and professor from 1957 to 2000. He coached the men’s basketball team for thirty years, winning a program-best 264 games and receiving Minnesota’s small college Coach of the Year award three times. As the track and cross-country coach, Bolstorff led his teams to eleven MIAC championships on the track and eight conference titles in cross country, coaching multiple individual champions in both sports. He retired as the golf coach in 2000 and was inducted into the Macalester Hall of Fame in 2003. Bolstorff passed away in December 2021 at the age of 90.