Henry, Diemer Chosen to USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame Class of 2025

NEW ORLEANS, La. — The U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association introduced Tuesday (Sept. 9) that James Henry, former athlete and coach of the University of Michigan monitor and area group, and alum Brian Diemer will likely be inducted into the group’s Coaches Hall of Fame Class of 2025.

Henry is the fourth Michigan coach to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, becoming a member of Keene Fitzpatrick, Ken Doherty and Don Canham.

Hired as the primary Black head coach of a Michigan varsity athletics group in 1985 after 4 years as a U-M sprints and jumps assistant coach, Henry turned the winningest girls’s monitor and area coach in Big Ten historical past in 33 years on the helm of the ladies’s monitor and area program. He spent one other 4 seasons sharing head coach duties with Jerry Clayton for the mixed males’s and girls’s program and served as an assistant coach below director of monitor and area/cross nation Kevin Sullivan in 2021-22.

Among all University of Michigan head coaches at school historical past, solely wrestling’s Cliff Keen (42 years) and softball’s Carol Hutchins (39 years) are longer-tenured.

Under his management, the Wolverines gained a Big Ten-record 16 group titles between the indoor and outside seasons and earned a pair of third-place NCAA Championships finishes amongst eight nationwide top-10 group showings. He was 13 instances named the Big Ten Coach of the Year and was named the Great Lakes Regional Coach of the Year six instances.

After main the Michigan girls to their first-ever Big Ten Outdoor Championships group title in 1993, the Wolverines had been a daily fixture at or close to the highest of the leaderboard. Of his 16 Big Ten group titles, 10 got here in years when Michigan swept each the indoor and outside crowns — 1994, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2016.

Michigan achieved its high-water mark in NCAA Championships competitors throughout a five-year streak from 2005-09. Under his steerage, the Wolverines racked up 9 top-15 finishes, together with a string of 4 straight top-10 showings in 2007 and 2008 that included third-place finishes on the 2007 NCAA Outdoor Championships and 2008 NCAA Indoor Championships.

Three amongst these student-athletes who he instantly coached — Nicole Forrester, Tiffany (Ofili) Porter and Cindy (Ofili) Sember — went on to compete at a mixed six Olympic Games, with six extra Olympic appearances from student-athletes from different occasion teams.

During his time at Michigan, 11 girls earned the Big Ten Medal of Honor in recognition of their accomplishments in competitors, within the classroom and locally. The Wolverines accrued three Academic All-America of the Year honors, 20 Academic All-America honors, 111 USTFCCCA All-Academic honors, 147 Big Ten Distinguished Scholar honors and greater than 600 Big Ten All-Academic honors.

Before assuming head teaching duties, Henry was an assistant coach from 1981-84 and a standout jumper for the Wolverines from 1977-80. He helped the Wolverines to 3 group titles throughout his undergraduate competitors profession and gained the 1980 outside Big Ten lengthy leap title. To today, he nonetheless ranks No. 4 on the all-time U-M lengthy leap listing indoors and No. 7 on the outside listing.

Diemer served as cross nation coach at Calvin from 1986-2022, including the position of distance coach for the lads’s and girls’s monitor and area groups beginning in 1987 and head coach of the ladies’s cross nation group starting in 2006.

After ending a detailed runner-up to Hope College in 1986, Calvin gained its first MIAA cross nation crown below Diemer in 1987 earlier than placing collectively a streak of 34 consecutive MIAA titles from 1987 to 2021. Eight of the years noticed the Knights rating an ideal 15 factors, together with six between 2000 and 2010.

Diemer led the lads’s cross nation group to 4 nationwide titles in seven years and completed runner-up within the different three. The Knights dominated in 2003, incomes an 80-point triumph that was the third-largest margin of victory in meet historical past at that time. Calvin’s girls landed on the rostrum in every year from 2006-08, highlighted by a runner-up end in 2008.

On the monitor, Diemer-coached athletes gained 5 NCAA occasion crowns and racked up multitudes of All-America honors. Patrick McNamara and John Lumkes dominated the steeplechase in 1989 and 1990, respectively, and Calvin stays the one males’s program in NCAA DIII historical past to win back-to-back steeplechase titles with completely different athletes.

Diemer was named USTFCCCA National Coach of the Year 4 instances and earned greater than 5 instances as many Regional Coach of the Year honors throughout his illustrious profession.

While at Michigan, Diemer gained the 1983 Big Ten and NCAA titles within the 3,000-meter steeplechase. After graduating from Michigan, Diemer competed on the worldwide circuit, successful the gold medal on the 1990 Goodwill Games and the silver medal on the 1995 Pan American Games. He was a three-time Olympian, competing within the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympic Games, and gained the bronze medal within the 3,000-meter steeplechase on the 1984 video games in Los Angeles with a career-best time of 8:14.06. Diemer gained the 1989 Glen Cunningham Award, introduced yearly to the highest distance runner within the United States.

Bob Braman (Florida State), Russ Jewett (Pittsburg State), Boo Schexnayder (Louisiana/LSU) and Patty Vavra (Missouri Southern) had been additionally introduced as a part of the Coaches Hall of Fame Class of 2025.

• USTFCCCA Release