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NEWS: California Hires Brandon Lawrence as Next Distance Coach
- Jonah Billings
- 5 hours ago
- 2 min read
Written by Jonah Billings, edits & additional commentary via Garrett Zatlin
University of California, Berkeley has hired former Cal Poly assistant coach Brandon Lawrence as the program's next head cross country and distance coach, the school announced on Saturday, July 20th.
Lawrence, who spent two years at Cal Poly working under Director of Cross Country and Track & Field, Ryan Vanhoy, also served as an assistant coach at Wake Forest University and a graduate assistant at Fort Hays State University. He will now take over for former head cross country coach Bobby Lockhart, who previously coached Golden Bear distance runners since 2019.
During his time as an assistant coach, Lawrence has seen success at nearly every stage of his relatively young career. His brief stint at Fort Hays State (Division Two) in 2021 and 2022 saw the Tigers send two distance athletes to the NCAA Outdoor Championships, one over 10,000 meters and one over 800 meters.
In his two years at Wake Forest, Lawrence assisted in developing distance stars such as Zach Facioni, Luke Tewalt and Rocky Hansen. The Demon Deacons also snapped a 28-year ACC cross country title drought in Lawrence’s first season of assisting the program in 2022. The Demon Deacon men proceeded to finish 5th at the NCAA XC Championships.
Most recently, Lawrence contributed to two years of Cal Poly cross country dominance in the Big West Conference. Lawrence was also present for the recent success of middle distance Mustang standouts such as Aidan McCarthy, Chris Caudillo, Carson Smith and Tatiana Cornejo on the track.
Lawrence will now take the helm of both the men’s and women’s distance programs at California. The Golden Bears' distance program has had a few individual success stories in recent years, but have struggled to record high finishes at the ACC XC Championships and the since-revamped PAC-12 XC Championships.
The California men last qualified for the NCAA XC Championship in 2016. The women's team last advanced in the fall of 2017, per Track & Field News.