Tina Krebs Bahn ’88, M ’90
Former Clemson track star continues to follow her passions
Tina Krebs Bahn came to America in 1982 thinking her stay would be brief. But after her freshman year at Clemson University, she decided to finish what she’d started.
“Wow, this is really exciting,” Bahn remembers thinking of her time at Clemson. “I can pursue both my study dream and my running career dream.”
What transpired over the next few years was one of the most decorated collegiate careers for a Clemson athlete.
A native of Denmark, Bahn ran for the women’s cross country and women’s track teams — and typically well ahead of the field. She became Clemson’s first female individual national champion in 1983 when she won the 1,000-yard run at the NCAA Indoor Championships. She went on to capture two more, becoming the first Clemson athlete in any sport to win three NCAA titles.
Counting cross country, Bahn was an eight-time All-American, all while pursuing multiple degrees from Clemson’s School of Architecture, the most impressive feat to some who witnessed Bahn’s Clemson Experience firsthand.
“She really, really, really catapulted the program,” says Wayne Coffman, who coached Bahn during his 12 years leading Clemson Women’s Cross Country and Clemson Women’s Track. “To be able to balance all that stuff out and to be exceptional in the classroom? Being exceptional says it all about her.”

That experience included a supportive culture that Bahn credits for much of her success as a Tiger.
“The professors were wonderful. And the coaches,” Bahn says. “I have never been told by my coach, ‘You could have done better.’ They were treating us with so much respect that you just really felt that you wanted to do the best you could do because you knew that they respected your effort.”
Those are cherished memories for Bahn, who returned to Denmark after earning her master’s to join Bahn Architects. She worked alongside her husband and the firm’s founder, Erik, whom she’d met in her native country while taking a summer break from her graduate studies. Their projects primarily focused on helping clients make their homes and spaces more accessible.
With her husband approaching retirement, Bahn recently changed careers. She’s now a schoolteacher, a position that lets her dabble in her former occupation through drawing classes. Reflecting on it all, Bahn realizes her passions have parallels.
“I’ve done so much practicing a rhythm with running and the length of my steps,” she says. “So, all these things that I’ve taken in as a runner, I could actually transfer into understanding what it was I had to do as an architect because I’ve been working physically with my body. That has been very interesting.”
Fun Fact: Also a member of the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame, in 2003, Bahn was the first track athlete to be inducted into the Clemson Ring of Honor.