Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

After eight years as assistant cross country coach at Oakland Community College, Eric Green believes he is well prepared to become the first men’s and women’s head cross country coach at Lawrence Tech.

Although the first practice can’t be held until Aug. 1, Green has plenty to do to put together the first LTU cross country teams following his appointment as the head coach. He arrived on campus Feb. 1 to start the process.

Green was a runner and swimmer at Pontiac Northern High School, and he learned how to maximize his potential as a runner from Bernie Little, his coach at Oakland Community College. His success in the 800 meters event earned him a scholarship at Northwest Missouri State University, where he earned All-American honors in the NCAA’s Division II.

He was head coach for track and cross country at Rochester College for two years, but jumped at the chance to return to OCC to become Little’s assistant. While there he helped recruit and coach 15 All-Americans of the National Junior College Athletic Association.

Now he’s excited to take head coaching duties in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics at Lawrence Tech. As a longtime assistant coach at OCC, Little knows most of the high school coaches and is very familiar with the recruiting process in Michigan.

According to Green, cross country runners perform well academically as a group, and he will start his search with high school students who can succeed at Lawrence Tech. He expects many of his runners to qualify for academic scholarships and aid packages. He plans to share his athletic scholarship budget with all his runners.

“Everyone who comes out for the team will have a chance to get a scholarship, not just one or two hot runners,” Green said. “You can’t say that at some other colleges.”

Green said it isn’t too late to start recruiting because many top high school runners are waiting to see if they can get into a Division I college. Those who don’t will be looking at the scholarships they can get at smaller colleges.

Coaches like to see how potential recruits run the two-mile event in indoor track before making a commitment to scholarship money, and some even wait until the conclusion of outdoor track season in the spring. So there is plenty of time to line up seven promising runners on the men’s and women’s teams.

“Students should be interested in Lawrence Tech because this is a first-year program,” Green said.

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