Andy Powell - Cross Country Coach - University of Washington Athletics

Andy Powell

Title:
Head Coach of Track & Field and Cross Country
Email:
acpowell@uw.edu

Powells' Vision To Serve Student-Athletes | UW Coach Powell's Athletes Make Sub-Four Mile Barrier Look Easy | UW Rides Team-First Approach To Second Pac-12 Track Title In A Row

2024 Pac-12 Men's Coach of the Year
2023 Pac-12 Men's Coach of the Year
2023 USTFCCCA West Region Men's Outdoor Head Coach of the Year
2023 USTFCCCA West Region Men's Indoor Head Coach of the Year
2022 USTFCCCA West Region Men's Outdoor Head Coach of the Year
2015 and 2016 USTFCCCA National Men's Indoor Assistant Coach of the Year
2014 and 2015 USTFCCCA National Men's Outdoor Assistant Coach of the Year

Andy Powell built the Husky men’s track & field team into the power of the Pac-12, and now looks to maintain the program’s momentum in the Big Ten era. Powell won back-to-back Pac-12 Coach of the Year awards in 2023 and 2024 after coaching the Dawgs to their first ever Pac-12 team title in 2023, and a successful title defense in 2024. That success has carried over to the NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Championships, where his Husky milers have won six national titles in the past four years, giving Powell-coached athletes a total of 40 NCAA titles in the past twenty years.

After more than a decade spent building the Oregon Ducks into a national powerhouse in college track and cross country, Powell and his wife Maurica made the move to the University of Washington in June of 2018, with Maurica assuming a Director's role and oversight of the women’s program, and Andy serving as Head Coach leading the men’s program.

Seattle has become “Mile City” under Powell. Through the 2025 outdoor season, Joe Waskom, Luke Houser, and Nathan Green combined for an historic run of NCAA titles in the mile or 1,500-meters, winning six out of seven championships in those two events. Green won his second national title in the 2025 NCAA Outdoor 1,500m final, giving UW four wins in a row in the event, tying the longest streak for any program in history with Villanova in 1968-71 and Oregon in 1959-62. Prior to Waskom, Houser, and Green's run of victories, it had been 14 years since UW had won a men’s NCAA title on the track.

Incredibly, Powell has now coached eight of the past 15 NCAA Champions at 1,500-meters dating back to his time at Oregon. In just six years, 21 different Huskies have broken the sub-four-minute mile barrier.

Another measure of Powell’s prowess in the 1,500-meters: he has had at least one NCAA Outdoor finalist in 16 of the past 17 years, with 29 finals entries over that span. The 2024 meet was the fifth time he had three men reach the final.

The numbers speak for themselves: 40 NCAA titles, 35 conference titles (32 Pac-12 and 3 Big Ten), and 211 All-America honors from his mid-distance, distance, and cross country athletes. At Oregon, Powell coached Edward Cheserek to a record-breaking 17 NCAA titles, making him the winningest male athlete in Division-I athletics.

Over five seasons, Powell oversaw Washington’s steady rise to the top of the Pac-12 pecking order before UW transitioned to the Big Ten. Prior to Powell taking leadership, the Huskies were 8th at the 2018 Pac-12 meet. In his first season in 2019, the Huskies moved up to fourth. The next time the meet was held, in 2021, the Dawgs climbed to third, and they were runner-up in 2022 before getting the historic back-to-back wins in 2023 and 2024.

In the first year in the Big Ten in 2024-25, the Huskies took second at the B1G Cross Country Championships, then finished fourth at their first indoor conference championships and sixth at the outdoor meet. Green was named the Big Ten Men’s Track Athlete of the Year for the outdoor season, the first Husky since 2000 to win a conference outdoor track athlete of the year award.

The men have now had top-20 finishes at six of the past seven NCAA Championships, between indoors and outdoors, including three top-10 finishes. Along with the fourth-place indoor finish in 2023, the Huskies were ninth at the 2023 outdoor meet for their first top-10 in 40 years. Washington placed third in the 2023 USTFCCCA Program of the Year rankings, which averages the finishes at all three national championships in one academic year, and was ninth in 2024-25.

The Huskies made more history in 2025 by winning the program’s first two Penn Relays Championship of America titles, claiming the distance medley relay and the 4xMile relays on consecutive days, with Green anchoring both. During the indoor season, the DMR made big headlines with the fastest time ever run in the event, at any level. Ronan McMahon-Staggs, Bodi Ligons, Kyle Reinheimer, and Green ran 9:14.10 in the Dempsey, fastest in world history indoors or out.

Andy Powell 2023 Pac-12 Championships

Titles kept coming in 2024, with Houser defending his NCAA Indoor title in the mile, becoming the first man to repeat since 2017-18. Waskom then won his second NCAA 1,500m title in 2024, which extended a streak that he started with the 2022 NCAA title at 1,500-meters.

Washington finished a program-best fourth-place at the 2023 NCAA Indoor meet, with Luke Houser winning the men’s mile final. Outdoors, the Huskies had a record 13 qualifiers in 2023, second-most in the NCAA, and finished ninth for the program’s first top-10 outdoor placing since 1979. Nathan Green and Joe Waskom went 1-2 in the 2023 1,500-meters final.

Powell’s group of distance runners made history in 2023 in multiple ways. At the Pac-12 Championships, they became just the second men's group ever to sweep the individual titles from 800-meters up. Sam Ellis won the 800-meters, Nathan Green won the 1,500-meters, Ed Trippas won the 3,000-meter steeplechase, and Brian Fay won both the 5,000-meters and the 10,000-meters. Indoors, the Dawgs made national headlines by having eight men break four minutes in the mile, all in the same race, and they did it on two separate occasions. Washington had six of the 16 qualifiers for the mile at 2023 NCAA Indoors, and four of the eight finalists.

Three of those eight milers would go on to make the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. Joe Waskom made Team USA after taking silver at the U.S. Championships, while Kieran Lumb won the Canadian Championships at 1,500-meters en route to Worlds, and Brian Fay broke the Irish National Record in the 5k on his way to Budapest. Fay, Lumb, and 2020-21 Husky Sam Tanner all qualified for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

In 2022, Powell's distance crew had a breakthrough year. Waskom took the NCAA title, but Luke Houser and Nathan Green finished fifth and seventh behind him in the final, giving UW three podium finishers in an event where no other team had more than one finalist.

Waskom and Houser also went 1-2 in the Pac-12 1,500-meters final, a first in UW history. Brian Fay won the Pac-12 steeplechase title, as Washington would finish second at the 2022 Pac-12 Championships, Fay took sixth indoors and seventh outdoors in the NCAA 5,000-meter finals, the best finish ever by a Husky in that event. Waskom was named USTFCCCA West Region Men's Track Athlete of the Year.

In the summer of 2022 they each signed contract extensions to keep the UW Track & Field momentum rolling through at least 2029.

Andy Powell 2023

Upon returning to competition after the Covid pandemic in the spring of 2021, Washington balanced the indoor track campaign along with the cross country season, as the two were shifted into the same time frame. The indoor season was highlighted by Sam Tanner who broke the overall NCAA record in the 1,500-meters, as he ran 3:34.72 at an indoor meet, hitting the Olympic Standard. Tanner would go on to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games for his native New Zealand in the summer of 2021. Andrew Jordan broke the school record in the 5k indoors, placing ninth at NCAA Indoors, and Isaac Green would shatter the 5k outdoor record in a 12th-place NCAA Outdoor finish.

The 2020 season was cut short due to Covid-19 with the Huskies having big expectations for the outdoor campaign. Powell coached three more distance runners to the NCAA Indoor Championships, as Anderson qualified in the 5k, Jack Rowe made his first NCAA meet in the 3k, and Stanovsek qualified once again in the mile.

At the 2019 Pac-12 Track Championships, the Husky men's team more than doubled its point total from the year before Powell's arrival, going from eighth with 42 points in 2018 to fourth with 85 points in 2019.

Powell's first year at Washington began with one of the most successful cross country seasons in school history to only build the excitement around the program. The men finished sixth at the 2018 NCAA Championships for their best finish in 25 years and second-best in school history. Paired with the ninth-place finish from the UW women's team it was the best combined finish for the program in school history. It was also the sixth-straight year that Powell's team finished top-10 at NCAAs.

Tanner Anderson and Tibebu Proctor earned their first cross country All-America honors to lead the Huskies at NCAAs. The Huskies also were second at 2018 Pac-12s for their best finish since 1994, and the Huskies matched that runner-up Pac-12 finish in 2023.

Andy Powell 2018

At Oregon from 2005-18 Powell established himself as one of the top distance coaches at any level. Beginning as an assistant coach for the men’s distance runners, Powell was promoted to Associate Head Coach of the men’s track and field team and cross country squads in 2010 and then in 2012 promoted again to Associate Head Coach for both men’s and women’s track and cross country teams at Oregon.

Oregon’s team trophy case overflowed during Powell's time in Eugene with four NCAA cross country titles, and 15 NCAA team titles in track; four outdoors and eleven indoors. The Ducks won the USTFCCCA Program of the Year title nine times on the women’s side and five times on the men’s side during Powell’s tenure. He assisted the Ducks to their first-ever NCAA Indoor Championship in 2009 and their historic sweep of the Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field Championship titles in both 2014 and 2015. The 2015 men’s distance crew set an NCAA record by scoring 70 points at the indoor championships.

Working specifically with the distance runners, Powell coached a number of the most decorated distance runners in the past twenty years of college track. His athletes’ success reflected back on him, as Powell won four USTFCCCA National Assistant Coach of the Year honors, earning the honor outdoors in 2014 and 2015 and indoors in 2015 and 2016.

Multiple-time NCAA Champions Galen Rupp, Andrew Wheating, and Matthew Centrowitz would all go on to international success, with Rupp and Centrowitz medaling at the Olympic Games, ending long American medal droughts in their events.

The men’s cross country team won back-to-back NCAA titles in 2007 and 2008, and earned eight more top-10 finishes during Powell’s time, while Cheserek won three straight NCAA individual cross country crowns from 2013-15 and Rupp got the win in 2008. In 2014, Cheserek got the win and teammate Eric Jenkins was the runner-up for a 1-2 Oregon finish.

The men further showed their depth with four NCAA victories in the distance medley relay indoors. And the hallowed sub-four-minute mile was achieved by an incredible 25 men under Powell.

The Ducks also kept an ironclad grip on the Pac-12 title for the final 12 years of Powell’s time in Eugene, after having won just six titles prior to their current streak.

A 2004 graduate of Stanford University, Powell stood out as one of the nation’s top collegiate middle distance runners. He competed on the Cardinal’s 2000 NCAA champion track and field squad and in cross country, he ran on the Cardinal team that finished fourth in the NCAA Championships in 2000 and won the Pac-10 title.

As a prep at Oliver Ames High School in North Easton, Mass., he won U.S. junior titles as a senior in the 1,500m and 5,000m and ran a state mile record of 4:02.7. The Foot Locker Cross Country qualifier also won titles as a high school athlete in the Pan American Junior Championships, Golden West Invitational, and Millrose Games.

He and wife Maurica have two sons, Owen and Jake. Owen, the nation's No. 1-ranked prep miler as a senior in 2025, will be a freshman for the Huskies in the fall of 2025.