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Mark Wetmore enters his 22nd season at Colorado, his 19th as the head coach, and is the only NCAA Division I coach to win all four NCAA cross country titles at the same school.
Wetmore’s squads have won five team titles since 2000. The women won in 2000, while the men won the following year. Both teams won the championship again in 2004 (CU became only the third school to win both championships in the same year) and in 2006 the men won again. Wetmore 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.
Wetmore became CU’s sixth head cross country and track and field coach on Nov. 6, 1995. He has tutored 53 individual conference champions and 11 individuals who have combined for 18 NCAA titles. Wetmore has coached 78 individuals to 228 All-American selections. He has produced 29 conference championship teams, most recently capturing the 2012 Pac-12 Men’s Cross Country Championship.
Wetmore’s distance runners have represented the United States at international competitions. During their collegiate careers, eight have qualified for the World Junior Cross Country Championships and seven have earned berths in the World Senior Cross Country Championships. Since 2000, nine Buffaloes have combined for 16 spots on the U.S. Olympic Team roster, including then-CU students Emma Coburn and Shalaya Kipp in 2012; both in the steeplechase.
His graduates have experienced post-collegiate success unrivaled by any NCAA distance program. Twenty-three of his athletes have earned professional running contracts and have combined for 11 USA Cross Country titles and 38 berths on U.S. teams that compete at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. CU graduates have won 12 USATF Championships and 10 individuals have represented the U.S. at the IAAF World Track & Field Championships.
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.
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