IT’S “BEN” A GOOD RUN: Ben Samara surveys the action during his tenure as the head coach of the Princeton High track and field team. Samara recently announced that he will be stepping down from the PHS track program to run the Tiger Time after-school program that is part of his newly created Samara Solutions Group. During his time with the Tigers, he guided his athletes to a number of New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) sectional and state group titles. (Photo by Rohan Viswanathan)

By Justin Feil

The 2025 spring season marked Ben Samara’s final one as head coach of the Princeton High track and field program.

Samara has stepped down to focus on running the Tiger Time after-school program that is part of his newly created Samara Solutions Group. The Tiger Time framework will be implemented starting in September at all four Princeton elementary schools.

“It’s really a passion of mine,” said Samara, who will remain as a school counselor at Riverside Elementary. “And so, I’m kind of going from one passion to another with that work.”

It won’t be easy for Samara to walk away from the PHS indoor and outdoor track and field programs. He’s been coaching for 20 years, first at his alma mater Hopewell Valley High before joining the PHS program in 2012, two years after he became a counselor in the school district. He worked hand-in-hand with Jim Smirk, the PHS cross country coach, after being associate head coach alongside track head coach Rashone Johnson and then became the indoor head coach in 2012 and took the helm of the outdoor program in 2019.

“When I first came in, Jim and I had a conversation about what we wanted to change,” said Samara. “We didn’t have the best team culture. There was a lot of things that we wanted to change, and we really just started from the ground up. We broke it down and we built it back up the way that we envisioned it. And I’ll just always be grateful that I had him as a partner to do it with.”

Smirk has been a constant through his PHS coaching career. Over the last two years, Samara got to work with family as his father, Fred, the retired Princeton University men’s track coach, was a volunteer coach on the PHS staff.

“I always wanted him to be my assistant coach,” said the younger Samara. “I always would joke with him, and so I pestered him, and I got him to come and he got hooked on the athletes too. And that was fun to see. And it was just a really good way to wrap up my time at PHS being able to bring him in, an Olympian (in the decathlon), to be able to work with me and some of these kids. It was just a joy.”

Samara has enjoyed plenty of success with his track teams and athletes through his tenure. It started in Hopewell with Emily Kianka, a state champion high jumper who cleared 5’11 under Samara’s tutelage before competing for the University of Virginia.

“Right as I’m starting out as a coach, to be able to go to the national stage with her and watch her and help her develop was incredible,” said Samara. “And then coming over to Princeton, my very first year, the girls were able to win the sectional title. I was able to do that with Jim and that kind of just set us on that path right away.”

In 2018, Samara was part of the staff that helped Princeton dominate for the 2018 New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Group 4 boys’ state championship. That team won the program’s first state group title since 1981.

“We spent years just really trying to build the culture of the team and to plug all the different event holes to try to make something happen,” said Samara. “We started with a triple with three sectional titles indoors in a row, and then we had a great cross country team that won the Meet of Champions (in 2016) and that kind of led into this just incredible juggernaut team that was, I believe, one of the best teams in New Jersey state history. We had so many incredible athletes.”

Athletes like runners Will Hare and Acasio Pinheiro, jumper Varun Narayan, and sprinter/jumper Nils Wildberg, pole vaulter Simon Schenk and thrower Paul Brennan spread the top talent around the events and amassed points in bunches. While the depth of the state’s talent usually ensures that a score in the 40s is enough to win, PHS overwhelmed the competition with 81 points.

“It’s one of the highest scoring groups in the history of the state of New Jersey,” said Samara. “We scored 81 points in the group meet and I’ll never forget that.”

There are athletes that have stood out too for their ability to raise the bar for the Tigers. Each successful team had their leaders that set the tone and helped to promote the sort of culture necessary to win.

“We had kids like Maddie Lea who were just workhorses and just would do whatever you ask them to do and compete where you needed them to and ended up getting multiple medals at state meets and were just incredible kids,” said Samara. “And that led into kids like Nils Wildberg and Varun Narayan, who ended up being multiple record holders. Those two guys in the long jump are absolute once in a lifetime. To have two 24-foot long jumpers in high school is unfathomable and was one of the proudest moments I’ve had as a coach to be able to compete with those guys.”

This year, Samara helped guide senior throwing star Sean Wilton to a historic campaign which saw him set the school indoor record in the shot put with a heave of 62’2.25 at the New Balance Nationals Indoor this March and then set a new PHS outdoor mark of 60’ 7.5 in winning the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Group 4 title.

“And then you look at a guy like Sean Wilton to round out my career to be able to watch him compete and to be able to watch him embody everything that our program wanted our athletes to be,” said Samara of Brown University commit Wilton. “It’s just been a really nice progression the whole way.”

The breadth of athletes and their interactions is what Samara is proudest of. He’s been a part of developing young people using track and field as a platform. It’s one of the reasons that makes leaving the program difficult.

“What I’ll miss most about coaching is just the relationship that you build with the athletes and the relationships that you see the athletes build with each other and the community that you build together,” said Samara. “The athletic achievements are great, but one of my proudest moments is every time somebody comes up to me and that former athlete tells me that the lessons that they learned in our program help them in their real life and their life after high school. That was always the goal and that’s something that Jim Smirk and I talked a lot about with our program, what our values are and what we want this program to mean to the athletes and the families. To have it be successful in that way is something I’m proud of and something I’ll miss for sure.”

Samara will shift gears to another student population in the school district, but it’s something he is equally passionate about building. Last December, he founded an educational consulting company, Samara Solutions. It’s grown quickly with services that consult with schools on AI integration and they will hold classes at The College of New Jersey. Their Tiger Time after-school program was hired by Princeton for the upcoming school year.

“I knew I was going have to stop coaching, but I definitely saw a need on the elementary level for really quality after-school programming,” said Samara. “I felt like I had a breadth of experience that would bring a lot to the table, and I just decided at the time for a next step.”

He will be using years of experience across his two work disciplines to build his new endeavor. Coaching and counseling have crossover that translates to each well.

“A lot of the things that I want to bring to the table in the after-school program is the same kind of stuff that I pride myself on with coaching, which is a lot of that social, emotional work and building connection and building community,” said Samara. “All the things that I think in our program are great. I’ve done a lot of that work at Riverside. I’ve done a lot of work on the track team. Now I want to bring it to all four elementary buildings and now it’s really about impacting as much of the Princeton community as possible.”

The PHS track and field team will always be close to his heart. Samara could return to coaching again down the line.

“Once I am done with my day job, so to speak, maybe on the next transition,” said Samara. “I can see myself going back either private coaching or coaching athlete, in some capacity, maybe coming back to coach at the high school. But I have to see where the wind takes me. I didn’t feel like I was done now. I saw myself coaching for 30 years and so I’m only halfway done.”

Samara sees his new direction as something that he couldn’t pass up, an important service to the school community. Two hundred and fifty students have signed up across the four schools. They will be his focus each day after school, but he will also find time to support the track and field program that he helped to build.

“At least for the first year or two, when there’s athletes there that I have coached, I’m not going to be able to stay away,” said Samara. “I won’t be able to be at practice because I’ll be at the after-school program but for counties, for some of those big meets, I’ll be there. I don’t think I’m going to be able to stay away. And now I’ve got my weekends free so I can come watch.”