NEWS: Drake Hires Sam Read as Head Distance Coach

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On Tuesday, Drake University announced the hiring of Sam Read as the program's next cross country and distance coach. Read's hire fills a gap left by the departure Jay Koloseus, the former Drake distance coach who joined the University of Arizona earlier this summer.

Read, a 2014 alumnus of Wartburg, spent the previous seven years as the head distance coach at Eastern Washington. While the Eagles were not a nationally competitive program under Read, he did lead them to fairly respectable success, relatively speaking.

In the first season of his tenure, the Eastern Washington men and women recorded last place finishes at the 2018 BIG Sky XC Championships. However, since then, the Eagles have improved enough to consistently emerge as a mid-pack team at the conference level.

Drake, however, is in a different situation which carries higher expectations, especially on the men's side. In recent years, the Bulldog men have been one of the better mid-major programs in the NCAA, developing All-American talents like Isaac Basten and Adam Fogg while winning Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) team cross country titles in 2021 and 2023.

The women of Drake do not boast as much recent success, but their 4th place finish at the MVC XC Championships was a promising development. They also advanced two distance runners to the West Regional Championships this past spring.

A program of Drake's stature will be a new challenge for Read. But given his success at Eastern Washington (albeit, on a smaller scale), Des Moines appears to be a natural next step for his career progression. As for the Bulldogs, the hope will be that Read can help the men return to the top of the MVC podium and take the women to new heights as well.