November 6, 1995.
That’s the day distance running changed at the NCAA Division I level.
Because that was when Mark Wetmore became just the sixth head cross country and track & field coach in the now 90-plus-year history of the University of Colorado athletic program.
Truthfully, the winds of change began to blow even sooner than that when the Buffaloes welcomed Wetmore as a volunteer assistant coach of the men’s distance program in 1992. Wetmore spent four years at Seton Hall University from 1988 to 1992 and 14 years before that at Bernards High School from 1974 to 1988 before arriving in Boulder.
But if you go back to Wetmore’s coaching genesis, it was quite simple.
“I started coaching because it was offered to me,” Wetmore told LetsRun back in 2004 of his tutoring a municipal children’s team, known as the Edge City Track Club, in his hometown of Bernardsville, New Jersey. “It was a summer job. It fit with another summer job. It was an evening deal. And I liked money. So I said, ‘Can I work a regular 9-5 or 8-4 job and then pick up this other evening thing and make some money?’ That’s all it was.”
It turns out that Wetmore had a gift for coaching and recruiting. Soon, Wetmore encouraged the parents of those children to start running, Wetmore had a squadron of runners aged 8-60 competing around town under the banner of the new Mine Mt. Road Department. Many of those younger athletes grew up to compete for Wetmore at Bernards High School and would go on to have fruitful collegiate careers.
Wetmore found his calling in coaching, but truly hit his stride at the collegiate level – specifically in the running mecca that is Boulder, Colorado. In fact, Wetmore was so focused on being in “The Berkeley of the Rockies” that he quit his job at Seton Hall, packed up all of his belongings and moved out to the Centennial State in 1992 with very little to his name.
It didn’t take long for Wetmore to be hired at CU by former head coach Jerry Quiller as a volunteer assistant coach in charge of the men’s distance athletes. Three years later, Wetmore took over the program and molded the Buffs into an absolute force.
Nearly 30 years into Wetmore’s tenure, CU squads have achieved unrivaled combined success at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships with eight national titles in more than 25 trips to the podium (most recently in 2019 with the men), five individual champions (most recently in 2018 with Dani Jones) and more than 140 All-America honors (nine alone in 2018). During the 2004 season, the Buffs became only the third program in meet history to sweep the team titles, joining Wisconsin in 1985 and Stanford in 1996. Wetmore later led the men to back-to-back national titles in 2013 and 2014 (CU’s quest for a three-peat was derailed by Syracuse in 2015).
Wetmore is the only coach in NCAA DI history to win both the men’s and women’s team and individual cross country championships. In fact, Wetmore has done so twice thus far.
The Buffs have been equally as impressive at the conference level in cross country, winning more than 30 league crowns and more than individual titles between the Big 12 Conference and the Pac-12 Conference. In fact, Wetmore was the winningest Big 12 coach in all sports when CU left the conference in 2011. Then the Buffs won the first six men’s team titles in the Pac-12, including the inaugural crown in 2012.
Don’t discount what Wetmore’s athletes have done on the track, either. In addition to more than 100 individual conference titles and two conference team titles, CU men and women have combined to win more than 20 NCAA individual titles, earn more than 200 All-America laurels and establish seven collegiate records, including five alone by 2009 The Bowerman winner Jenny Barringer (now Simpson).
Domestic and international success have been calling cards of Wetmore’s athletes, many of whom he still coaches post-collegiately, including Simpson. Current and former CU athletes have combined for more than 20 Olympic team berths, more than 30 World Championship team berths and more than 60 appearances at the World Cross Country Championships. Two of those athletes, Emma Coburn (steeple) and Simpson (1500), won World Championship gold and Olympic bronze in their respective events.
Sandwiched between that Hall-of-Fame-worthy fortune, Chris Lear chronicled CU’s 1998 season – Wetmore’s third as head coach – in his best-selling book, “Running with the Buffaloes.” That year, Adam Goucher became just the second CU athlete to win an individual title at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, which paced the men’s team to a third-place finish.