As Colorado head coach Mark Wetmore enters his 15th season at Colorado, he does so as the only NCAA Division I coach to win all four NCAA cross country titles at the same school.  His women’s team won the championship at Iowa State in 2000, while his men won the following year at Furman. He has coached Adam Goucher (1998), Jorge Torres (2002) and Dathan Ritzenhein (2003) to men’s individual titles, while Kara Grgas-Wheeler won the 2000 women’s crown. Both men’s and women’s teams won the championship again in 2004 (CU became only the third school to win both championships in the same year). His 2006 men’s team also won the title. His squads have won five team titles since 2000.

Wetmore’s coaching career began immediately after high school with a USATF club team, while simultaneously he coached the distance runners at his alma mater Bernards High. Wetmore served a three year stint at Seton Hall (from 1988-1991) once again as the coach of the men’s and women’s distance events before moving to Boulder in 1991 and accepting an assistant position in 1992.        

On November 6, 1995, Wetmore became CU’s sixth head cross country and track and field coach. Just weeks later at the 1995 NCAA Cross Country Championship in Ames, Iowa, both teams finished on the podium; the women took second and the men placed fourth.

Wetmore has tutored 46 individual conference champions and nine individuals who have combined for 16 NCAA titles. He has coached 70 individuals to 212 All-American selections. Wetmore has produced 26 conference championship teams, most recently capturing the 2008 Big 12 Men’s Outdoor Track and Field Championship at CU’s Potts Field in May.

Wetmore’s distance runners have represented the United States at dozens of international competitions. During their collegiate careers, eight athletes have qualified for the World Junior Cross Country Championships and six have earned berths in the Senior World Cross Country Championships. In 2007, Jenny Barringer captured the USA steeplechase title and represented the U.S. at the IAAF World Championships in Osaka, Japan. In 2008 she made the U.S. Olympic Team and broke her own American record with her ninth place finish in the Beijing final. Barringer topped that in 2009 when she won the U.S. title again and went on to a fifth-place finish at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin; breaking her own American record by almost 10 seconds. Barringer also won the inaugural USTFCCCA The Bowerman award on 2009, which goes to the top collegiate track and field athlete.

His graduates have experienced post-collegiate success that is unrivaled by any NCAA distance program. Twenty-three of his athletes have earned professional running contracts and have combined for 10 USA Cross Country National Titles and 37 berths on USA teams that compete at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. On the track, CU graduates have won 11 USA Championships and nine individuals have represented the U.S. at the IAAF World Track and Field Championships. Since 2000, eight graduates have combined for 11 spots on the U.S. Olympic Team roster.

A native of Bernardsville, N.J., Charles Mark Wetmore graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English Education from Rutgers in 1978 and then completed a M.Ed. in movement sciences from Columbia in 1988.