After a total of 17 years coaching Husker athletes, David Harris is set to retire.
The head cross country coach and track and field distance coach announced his retirement will be effective at the end of the NCAA Outdoor Championships, which run through Sunday.
Harris has served as Nebraska’s head cross country, distance and middle distance coach since 2012. Before that, he spent seven seasons in the 1980s and 1990s coaching NU’s middle distance runners and men’s sprinters and hurdlers. Sandwiched between stints in Lincoln, he spent 19 years as the Emporia State head cross country and track and field coach, where he was named MIAA Coach of the Year 11 times.
“I’m thankful to Coach Pepin and the University of Nebraska for not one, but two stints as a coach at this great place,” Harris said. “It has been an unbelievable journey, and of course I also owe a lot of that to all of the student-athletes I’ve been blessed to coach throughout the years. I want to thank each and every one of them for their hard work and dedication.”
Nebraska’s cross country teams have improved steadily under Harris, improving their standings in the Big Ten each season. The men’s team had their best-ever finish last season, taking fifth.
Just last season, George Kusche also became Nebraska’s first-ever Big Ten cross country individual champion in 2021, and Erika Freyhof became the top Husker female finisher (sixth place) in the Huskers’ Big Ten Conference era.
One of the most respected coaches in the track and field community, Harris was the first non-Division I president in the history of the USTFCCCA. Harris served in numerous leadership roles within the USTFCCCA and earned two prestigious awards. He was named the 2001 USTCA Women’s NCAA Division II National Outdoor Coach of the Year and was most recently awarded the Jimmy Carnes Distinguished Service Award by the USTFCCCA.