Courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Tjerk van Herwaarden, who won five national championships in seven seasons on the coaching staff at Maryland, has been named head coach of the Harvard field hockey team, Robert L. Scalise, the Nicholls Family Director of Athletics announced Monday.

As associate head coach, van Herwaarden helped the Terrapins win the NCAA title last season, following up championships in 2005, ’06, ’08 and ’10. He joined the staff as an assistant coach in 2005 and was named the team’s technical director/coach in 2007.

“Tjerk van Herwaarden has achieved great success at the collegiate and international levels, and we are delighted to welcome him to Harvard as head field hockey coach,” Scalise said. “As a key figure on five NCAA championship teams, he is a proven winner, and he brings with him unmatched technical expertise.”

Van Terwaarden has served as an assistant coach, head coach and technical director at every national and international level over the last decade. He is the only current coach in the country to have won national championships in NCAA Division I, USA Field Hockey Women's High Performance and the USAFH Men's National Championship.

Most recently, his experience and knowledge has been called upon by the U.S. National Field Hockey program, serving as an assistant coach with the U.S. men's national team since 2006, traveling to the 2007 Pan American games and the Olympic qualifying tournament in Auckland, New Zealand in 2008. He was a part of the coaching staff that led the U.S. men's national team to the silver medal at the 2009 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, the highest finish ever for the U.S. men. He also coached the women's U-16 team in 2006, traveling to his home country, and the U-19 team in Argentina in 2007.

Along with working with the U.S. men's team, van Herwaarden was also selected head coach of the USFHA's High Performance Thundersticks squad in 2007. He led the team to the 2006 USFHA national championship.

Prior to joining the Terps, van Herwaarden served as head coach of the Gooische women's team second Division in the Netherlands, considered to have the best field hockey competition in the world. His main focus was on development of technical and tactical skills.

From 1999-2003, van Herwaarden was an assistant coach of the Kampong 1st Ladies club team, leading them to the semifinals of the national tournament in back-to-back years. While with the team, he mentored some of the country's top field hockey players who went on to win a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and are current members of the Dutch national team.

Van Herwaarden has devoted much of his time teaching the sport of field hockey. He was coach for the KNHB, the Royal Dutch field hockey association, youth development program for five years and was a coach conductor for the same organization, planning course programs and the educational structure for coursework related to the sport. He currently is a USAFH level 2 coaching course presenter and assessor.

Van Herwaarden is the owner and co-founder of Worldcamp USA, which runs Dutch field hockey camps in the United States, and also serves as technical director. He has been a clinician for eight years at the National Field Hockey Festival and is a KNHB Level A and B licensed coach. He has been a guest speaker at the NFHCA's national coaches convention on several occasions.

Van Herwaarden's technical expertise earned him a Level III coaching certification, the highest coaching accreditation by the USFHA, in the fall of 2007. He is one of only five coaches in the United States to have reached Level III status and has been given the recommendation to complete an International FIH Coaching Course.

Van Herwaarden was also an account manager for SNS Bank in the Netherlands from 1999 until for Maryland. He earned a business economics degree at the College of Economic Studies, Amsterdam (HES) in 1997.