TicketsCOACH CROFFORD BIO
// QUICK HITS ON COACH CROFFORD
• Guided the women to back-to-back Top 9 finishes at the AAC Cross Country Championships, including sixth place in 2016, the highest finish for UC in the AAC and the best since taking sixth in 2004
• Has coached an athlete to AAC All-Conference honors in cross country (Top 15 finish) in back-to-back years, the only two such honors earned in the team’s five years in the AAC
• Her women have recorded 33 marks that rank in the program’s all-time Top 10 on the track, including four school records (indoor DMR, outdoor 1,500m, outdoor 4x1500m and freshman 3,000m)
• To date, when counting the indoor 800m and mile and the outdoor 800m and 1,500m, her athletes have recorded 16 Top 10 marks, including six of the 10 in the 1,500m run
// COACH CROFFORD
The 2018-19 seasons will mark the third Lara Crofford has been in charge of leading the women’s distance program at the University of Cincinnati and her fourth year overall in Clifton as she will return in her role as an assistant coach for the Bearcats. In her short time in Clifton, Crofford’s efforts to raise the profile of the program have seen numerous women rewrite the school’s all-time Top 10 lists and garner several awards while also helping the UC women capture three American Athletic Conference titles in outdoor (two) and indoor (one) track & field in the last three years.
// CROSS COUNTRY
In just two years guiding the women’s cross country program, Crofford’s runners have posted outstanding results both individually and as a team. As a team, her Bearcats have finished sixth in the American Athletic Conference Championships in 2016 and ninth in 2017, giving the program back-to-back single-digit finishes for the first time since 2011 and 2012, and the team’s only single-digit placements in the five years UC has compete in the AAC. In fact, the team’s sixth-place showing in 2016 was the best for the UC women since 2004 (12 years) when the Bearcats were sixth in Conference USA.
To find the improved team results, the individuals have had to step up and that is certainly what happened as the scoring individuals have continued to shave time off their personal bests while finishing higher in the standings as well. In 2016, Juliana Madzia placed 13th overall at the AAC meet in Cincinnati to earn AAC All-Conference accolades, the first time a Bearcats woman had earned the accolade since the inception of the league. One year later, in Philadelphia, Madison Dunlap continued her massive improvements and placed 15th on a very hilly course, running a personal-best time to earn the program’s second all-conference honor in as many years.
Dunlap got things off to a hot start in the first race of the year at the Queen City Invitational in Cincinnati as she not only led the team with a ninth-place finish, but did so by running 18:05.3 over the 5,000m course. What was more impressive is her time was a massive personal-best as she lowered her previous best by 1:25. She followed that up two meets later at the All-Ohio Championships with another PR, lowering her 6,000m run time by 2:17 to help UC finish 7th overall in the state meet. The team also was bolstered by a strong youth movement that include big gains from sophomore Hannah Markel and the emergence of freshman Sam Mikula, both of whom were the top finishers for UC in other meets during the year.
In 2016, Madzia led the charge as she was the team’s top finisher in five of six races, posting sub-23 minute times in all five of her 6,000m races and running under 22 minutes on three occasions. One of those times came at the American meet where she finished 13th overall to earn all-conference honors. Following Madzia’s track & field season, the graduate was considered for the NCAA Women of the Year Award and finished among the Top 30 for the highest honor given by the national governing body.
// TRACK & FIELD
The 2018 season saw 10 marks recorded that ranked among the Top 10 in UC’s indoor history, including the school record in the DMR as the team ran 11:41.09 at the Charlie Thomas Invitational before taking fourth at the AAC Championships, the highest finish in the AAC era and the third-best ever at UC. Along with both Alexis Anton and Sammy Hentz making the 800m final, the group tallied nine points, the most it has scored in the five years of the AAC. Individually, seniors Alexis Anton and Meg Westerheide moved up within the Top 10 lists, including Westerheide running 4:58.70 for just the second sub-5 time in UC history. The youth of the team also shined bright as Markel and Mikula both added their names to two Top 10 ledgers, showing their range by ranking #4 (mile) and #3 (3,000m) for Markel and #6 and #7 for Mikula.
Outdoors in 2018, another leap in improvement was noted, led by another solid showing from Anton, who scored seven points at the AAC Championships, the most the group has accounted for in the AAC era and more than the previous four seasons (6.0) combined. To reach that point total, Anton ran a strong double, finishing fourth in the 1,500m run with a school-record 4:26.90 before taking seventh in the 800m final with a PR 2:10.00. Her record in the metric mile broke a 16-year old mark (Angie Kist, 4:31.18 in 2002) and gave UC three names on the list this year in event with Markel sitting eighth and Dunlap 10th.
During the 2017 season, Crofford’s first in charge of the women’s distances, her women finished with 13 marks on the individual event lists and another three in relays, including the 4x1500m relay school record for the third year in a row (Dunlap, O’Donnell, V. Robinson, Westerheide). Leading the way was Westerheide, who moved up to second in the indoor mile and outdoor 1,500m run along with the ninth and fourth-fastest 800m times outdoor and indoor, respectively. In fact, Westerheide had one of the best meets in recent years at the AAC Outdoor Championships as she finished fourth overall in the 1,500m run with a time of 4:31.71, which was just over one-half of one second from the school record. Her placement grabbed five team points and also made her just the second UC woman to score in a distance event (800m-10,000m) at the AAC outdoor meet, a meet the women won for the second year in a row. It also gave UC’s women points in both conference track meets in 2017 as Westerheide joined Robinson, Sylvana Ross and Sammy Hentz in placing seventh in the indoor DMR.
Westerheide was not the only woman reshaping the record books as she led an assault on the 1,500m chart all season with three others adding their names, including Vanessa Robinson (#6), Marina Wrede (#8) and Dunlap (#9). In fact, Westerheide also spearheaded massive changes to the indoor mile ledger that also saw Robinson (#7) and Dunlap (#9) join the Top 10 listing as well.
In 2015-16, her first academic year on campus, the former four-year letter winner at the University of Nebraska assisted Sam Burroughs with coaching the cross country and distance teams while also heading up several day-to-day items for the program as a whole. Her first year also was eventful as the women’s track and field program claimed its first conference title by winning the American Athletic Conference Outdoor Championships after taking a program-best second place indoors.
On the track during her first season, she worked closely with Vanessa Robinson, who broke the school’s freshman record in the 3,000m steeplechase twice and qualified to the U.S. Junior Championships. Robinson was one of seven different women that also recorded times (indoor and outdoor) that ranked among the Top 10 in UC’s history. Outdoors, a pair of distance relays broke school records, including the 4x1,500m relay bettering the school mark by nearly 53 seconds and the distance medley relay taking six seconds off the previous best.
// COMPETITIVE CAREER
Crofford was a standout in the collegiate ranks that excelled in both the field of competition as well as in the classroom. A point scorer (Top 8) 12 different times for the Huskers at the Big XII Conference championship events, Crofford also competed on the national stage, earning four berths into the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships. On the track, she also advanced to the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships three times. During the 2008 season, she competed in the 10,000m run and turned in a time that met the U.S. Olympic Team Trials ‘B’ standard. A two-time USTFCCCA All-Academic honoree, Crofford earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Nutrition, Exercise and Health Sciences in December 2011.
A native of Pennsylvania, Crofford returned to the Keystone State to close out her collegiate eligibility as she enrolled at Shippensburg University in 2012 to pursue a Master’s of Science in Organizational Development and Leadership. Outside of the classroom, she participated in one season each of indoor and outdoor track and field where she collected an All-America honor at the NCAA Division II Indoor Track & Field Championships for the Raiders. At the indoor meet, she helped the distance medley relay to a sixth-place showing to earn All-America status while also competing in the 5,000m run. Outdoors, Crofford nearly collected a second All-American certificate, finishing ninth – one place shy of All-America honors – in the 10,000m run after setting the school record in the event.
Following her first coaching stint at Ship, Crofford ran professionally. She ran for two years in Providence, R.I. with NE Distance and Saucony, where she trained with a pair of athletes that recently represented Team USA at the 2016 Rio Olympics: Molly Huddle (sixth in the 10,000m run) and Amy Cragg (ninth in the marathon).
Although she has turned her focus to coaching, Crofford continues to compete in her spare time as well. In 2017, she broke a nine-year old course record by 27 seconds as she captured the 2017 Flying Pig Paycor Half Marathon in Cincinnati, running the hilly 13.1-mile course in 1:20.21. She also has competed in the Little Kings Mile, winning the elite women’s division in 2016 and placing third in 2018.
// COACHING EXPERIENCE
At the conclusion of the 2012 outdoor season, Crofford remained at Ship, serving as a volunteer assistant coach during a 2012 cross country season that saw the women’s team place seventh nationally at the NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships. Then, in 2013, she was hired full time to coach track and field. During that time, she assisted in coaching student-athletes to four team and 11 individual conference titles while adding 11 All-America honors. The men’s distance medley relay also captured the national title indoors. Between her coaching stint with the Raiders and joining the Bearcats, Crofford both ran professionally and remained in coaching. During her time in Providence, she took on coaching duties at nearby Woonsocket Middle School, helping to revive a program that had been discontinued six years prior to her arrival.
// QUICK HITS ON COACH CROFFORD
• Guided the women to back-to-back Top 9 finishes at the AAC Cross Country Championships, including sixth place in 2016, the highest finish for UC in the AAC and the best since taking sixth in 2004
• Has coached an athlete to AAC All-Conference honors in cross country (Top 15 finish) in back-to-back years, the only two such honors earned in the team’s five years in the AAC
• Her women have recorded 33 marks that rank in the program’s all-time Top 10 on the track, including four school records (indoor DMR, outdoor 1,500m, outdoor 4x1500m and freshman 3,000m)
• To date, when counting the indoor 800m and mile and the outdoor 800m and 1,500m, her athletes have recorded 16 Top 10 marks, including six of the 10 in the 1,500m run
// COACH CROFFORD
The 2018-19 seasons will mark the third Lara Crofford has been in charge of leading the women’s distance program at the University of Cincinnati and her fourth year overall in Clifton as she will return in her role as an assistant coach for the Bearcats. In her short time in Clifton, Crofford’s efforts to raise the profile of the program have seen numerous women rewrite the school’s all-time Top 10 lists and garner several awards while also helping the UC women capture three American Athletic Conference titles in outdoor (two) and indoor (one) track & field in the last three years.
// CROSS COUNTRY
In just two years guiding the women’s cross country program, Crofford’s runners have posted outstanding results both individually and as a team. As a team, her Bearcats have finished sixth in the American Athletic Conference Championships in 2016 and ninth in 2017, giving the program back-to-back single-digit finishes for the first time since 2011 and 2012, and the team’s only single-digit placements in the five years UC has compete in the AAC. In fact, the team’s sixth-place showing in 2016 was the best for the UC women since 2004 (12 years) when the Bearcats were sixth in Conference USA.
To find the improved team results, the individuals have had to step up and that is certainly what happened as the scoring individuals have continued to shave time off their personal bests while finishing higher in the standings as well. In 2016, Juliana Madzia placed 13th overall at the AAC meet in Cincinnati to earn AAC All-Conference accolades, the first time a Bearcats woman had earned the accolade since the inception of the league. One year later, in Philadelphia, Madison Dunlap continued her massive improvements and placed 15th on a very hilly course, running a personal-best time to earn the program’s second all-conference honor in as many years.
Dunlap got things off to a hot start in the first race of the year at the Queen City Invitational in Cincinnati as she not only led the team with a ninth-place finish, but did so by running 18:05.3 over the 5,000m course. What was more impressive is her time was a massive personal-best as she lowered her previous best by 1:25. She followed that up two meets later at the All-Ohio Championships with another PR, lowering her 6,000m run time by 2:17 to help UC finish 7th overall in the state meet. The team also was bolstered by a strong youth movement that include big gains from sophomore Hannah Markel and the emergence of freshman Sam Mikula, both of whom were the top finishers for UC in other meets during the year.
In 2016, Madzia led the charge as she was the team’s top finisher in five of six races, posting sub-23 minute times in all five of her 6,000m races and running under 22 minutes on three occasions. One of those times came at the American meet where she finished 13th overall to earn all-conference honors. Following Madzia’s track & field season, the graduate was considered for the NCAA Women of the Year Award and finished among the Top 30 for the highest honor given by the national governing body.
// TRACK & FIELD
The 2018 season saw 10 marks recorded that ranked among the Top 10 in UC’s indoor history, including the school record in the DMR as the team ran 11:41.09 at the Charlie Thomas Invitational before taking fourth at the AAC Championships, the highest finish in the AAC era and the third-best ever at UC. Along with both Alexis Anton and Sammy Hentz making the 800m final, the group tallied nine points, the most it has scored in the five years of the AAC. Individually, seniors Alexis Anton and Meg Westerheide moved up within the Top 10 lists, including Westerheide running 4:58.70 for just the second sub-5 time in UC history. The youth of the team also shined bright as Markel and Mikula both added their names to two Top 10 ledgers, showing their range by ranking #4 (mile) and #3 (3,000m) for Markel and #6 and #7 for Mikula.
Outdoors in 2018, another leap in improvement was noted, led by another solid showing from Anton, who scored seven points at the AAC Championships, the most the group has accounted for in the AAC era and more than the previous four seasons (6.0) combined. To reach that point total, Anton ran a strong double, finishing fourth in the 1,500m run with a school-record 4:26.90 before taking seventh in the 800m final with a PR 2:10.00. Her record in the metric mile broke a 16-year old mark (Angie Kist, 4:31.18 in 2002) and gave UC three names on the list this year in event with Markel sitting eighth and Dunlap 10th.
During the 2017 season, Crofford’s first in charge of the women’s distances, her women finished with 13 marks on the individual event lists and another three in relays, including the 4x1500m relay school record for the third year in a row (Dunlap, O’Donnell, V. Robinson, Westerheide). Leading the way was Westerheide, who moved up to second in the indoor mile and outdoor 1,500m run along with the ninth and fourth-fastest 800m times outdoor and indoor, respectively. In fact, Westerheide had one of the best meets in recent years at the AAC Outdoor Championships as she finished fourth overall in the 1,500m run with a time of 4:31.71, which was just over one-half of one second from the school record. Her placement grabbed five team points and also made her just the second UC woman to score in a distance event (800m-10,000m) at the AAC outdoor meet, a meet the women won for the second year in a row. It also gave UC’s women points in both conference track meets in 2017 as Westerheide joined Robinson, Sylvana Ross and Sammy Hentz in placing seventh in the indoor DMR.
Westerheide was not the only woman reshaping the record books as she led an assault on the 1,500m chart all season with three others adding their names, including Vanessa Robinson (#6), Marina Wrede (#8) and Dunlap (#9). In fact, Westerheide also spearheaded massive changes to the indoor mile ledger that also saw Robinson (#7) and Dunlap (#9) join the Top 10 listing as well.
In 2015-16, her first academic year on campus, the former four-year letter winner at the University of Nebraska assisted Sam Burroughs with coaching the cross country and distance teams while also heading up several day-to-day items for the program as a whole. Her first year also was eventful as the women’s track and field program claimed its first conference title by winning the American Athletic Conference Outdoor Championships after taking a program-best second place indoors.
On the track during her first season, she worked closely with Vanessa Robinson, who broke the school’s freshman record in the 3,000m steeplechase twice and qualified to the U.S. Junior Championships. Robinson was one of seven different women that also recorded times (indoor and outdoor) that ranked among the Top 10 in UC’s history. Outdoors, a pair of distance relays broke school records, including the 4x1,500m relay bettering the school mark by nearly 53 seconds and the distance medley relay taking six seconds off the previous best.
// COMPETITIVE CAREER
Crofford was a standout in the collegiate ranks that excelled in both the field of competition as well as in the classroom. A point scorer (Top 8) 12 different times for the Huskers at the Big XII Conference championship events, Crofford also competed on the national stage, earning four berths into the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships. On the track, she also advanced to the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships three times. During the 2008 season, she competed in the 10,000m run and turned in a time that met the U.S. Olympic Team Trials ‘B’ standard. A two-time USTFCCCA All-Academic honoree, Crofford earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Nutrition, Exercise and Health Sciences in December 2011.
A native of Pennsylvania, Crofford returned to the Keystone State to close out her collegiate eligibility as she enrolled at Shippensburg University in 2012 to pursue a Master’s of Science in Organizational Development and Leadership. Outside of the classroom, she participated in one season each of indoor and outdoor track and field where she collected an All-America honor at the NCAA Division II Indoor Track & Field Championships for the Raiders. At the indoor meet, she helped the distance medley relay to a sixth-place showing to earn All-America status while also competing in the 5,000m run. Outdoors, Crofford nearly collected a second All-American certificate, finishing ninth – one place shy of All-America honors – in the 10,000m run after setting the school record in the event.
Following her first coaching stint at Ship, Crofford ran professionally. She ran for two years in Providence, R.I. with NE Distance and Saucony, where she trained with a pair of athletes that recently represented Team USA at the 2016 Rio Olympics: Molly Huddle (sixth in the 10,000m run) and Amy Cragg (ninth in the marathon).
Although she has turned her focus to coaching, Crofford continues to compete in her spare time as well. In 2017, she broke a nine-year old course record by 27 seconds as she captured the 2017 Flying Pig Paycor Half Marathon in Cincinnati, running the hilly 13.1-mile course in 1:20.21. She also has competed in the Little Kings Mile, winning the elite women’s division in 2016 and placing third in 2018.
// COACHING EXPERIENCE
At the conclusion of the 2012 outdoor season, Crofford remained at Ship, serving as a volunteer assistant coach during a 2012 cross country season that saw the women’s team place seventh nationally at the NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships. Then, in 2013, she was hired full time to coach track and field. During that time, she assisted in coaching student-athletes to four team and 11 individual conference titles while adding 11 All-America honors. The men’s distance medley relay also captured the national title indoors. Between her coaching stint with the Raiders and joining the Bearcats, Crofford both ran professionally and remained in coaching. During her time in Providence, she took on coaching duties at nearby Woonsocket Middle School, helping to revive a program that had been discontinued six years prior to her arrival.