North Central College Coaching Legend Won 19 NCAA Division 3 Cross Country Titles

By David Woods for DyeStat

Photo courtesy North Central College

Coming out of high school in the 1990s, Rob Harvey and a friend had NCAA Division 1 scholarship offers in track and field. They visited North Central College, a Division 3 school in Naperville, Ill. Yet Harvey’s friend was insistent on going Div. 1, and said so.

Which school, North Central coach Al Carius asked. Illinois State, the friend replied.

There, during a recruiting visit to North Central, Carius telephoned the Illinois State coach and encouraged him to make an offer.

Up to then, Harvey was uncommitted. He made his decision: He would run for Al Carius.

“If he was willing to do that,” Harvey said, “what would he do for me when he’s coaching me?”

Carius is so respected that in 2000, the U.S. Track and Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association designated him coach of the century.  USTFCCCA honored a man who didn’t send runners into the Olympics but into, well, coaching – middle school, high school, college.

“I could make the case he’s got more than 500 coaches out there,” said Harvey, a coach at Wheaton-Warrenville South IL.

That is a better way to measure Carius’ impact than other numbers, like the 19 national titles and 16 runner-up finishes in Div. 3 cross country. As head coach or assistant, his track teams won 12 national titles, six indoors and six outdoors.

Carius died Tuesday (Sept. 9). He was 83.

There will be a celebration of life from 1-4 p.m. on Sept. 21 at the college’s Merner Field House, followed by a ceremonial lap around the track.

The Morton, Ill., native belongs to six halls of fame. The USTFCCA’s D3 program of the year award – given to the top average finish across cross-country, indoor and outdoor track – is named for Carius.

He ran in college for Illinois, winning two Big Ten titles in cross country and two in the two-mile. He finished 12th at the 1962 NCAA Championships in cross country.

Carius arrived at North Central in 1966. He retired as head coach in 2020 after being diagnosed with stage four bone cancer.

“Run for Fun and Personal Bests” was his motto, and also the title of his book and a documentary about his life. In the book, he wrote success is "accessible to every individual, founded on their voluntary choices each day to better themselves through self-growth . . . by reaching their personal goals, competing solely against themselves, with the support of their teammates."

Tributes poured in on social media, notably one by Jims (cq)  Dickerson, a former North Central runner who coaches at Hinsdale South:

“Al normalized love.”

Another Carius protege is Colorado coach Sean Carlson. While at Notre Dame, Carlson coached Yared Nuguse, the Olympic 1,500-meter bronze medalist and former world indoor record-holder in the mile.

“Al Carius was a father to so many of us,” Carlson posted on Instagram. “His influence reached far beyond running, shaping not only our journeys as athletes but also the people we became.”

Perhaps North Central’s most memorable team was in cross-country in 1993, when the Cardinals scored a record low of 32 points from a 1-2-5-6-18 finish. Dan Mayer was first, John Weigel second, Brian Henz fifth, Dickerson fifth and freshman Matt Brill 18th. Dan Iverson was a non-scoring sixth man in 34th.

Mayer’s 10,000-meter time of 28:48.4 from 1994 was a D3 record for 22 years and is still No. 4 all-time. Weigel was D3 cross-country champion in 1995 and Brill in 1996.

“We just knew we were going to run well at nationals,” Iverson said. “It was an internal focus. Let that be the results. It took a lot of pressure off of everybody.”

Iverson coaches at Naperville North IL. He credited Carius with changing the trajectory of his life.

Iverson had planned to go to college for landscape architecture. He visited North Central “on a whim,” he said. He decided then and there he would be a history teacher and track coach, and has been that for 32 years.

He said Carius’ run-for-fun mantra was not so simple, that it allowed everyone to feel valued and motivated to give their best.

“When you have everybody bought in to something, that’s pretty awesome to see,” he said.

Iverson was so bought in that at the 1994 D3 Track Championships, he recovered from a late fall in the steeplechase to finish eighth. He scored one point. North Central won the team title on its home track by that one point, 75-74, over Wisconsin-LaCrosse.

“It still stands as the greatest I ever ran. It was also deeply imperfect,” Iverson said.

When his own coaching career began, Iverson asked what books he should read, and Carius recommended two by basketball coaches, They Call Me Coach by John Wooden and Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson.

North Central’s secret wasn’t the workouts, Iverson said. Other teams ran the same ones. Carius understood the “real magic” wasn’t the training, Iverson said, but the culture.

“He loved us all the same in his eyes. And he loved each one of us individually,” said Henz, a former coach on the North Central women’s staff. “With the idea that with work, any one could be their best selves.  And you were doing it for the people around you. And everybody got better.”

Henz said the coach’s genius was in getting runners to work things out for themselves.  Henz told Carius he didn’t want to race much indoors as a freshman, and instead just train.

Carius’ response?

“All right! Absolutely.”

Thirty years later, Carius brought it up in conversation. He remembered. The coach seemingly always knew what to say, and how to say it.

Carius became one of those coaches affecting eternity. No one can ever know when his influence stops. His athletes go on to coach others, who in turn coach future generations.

“It’s got to be in the thousands upon thousands,” Henz said. “It’s an amazing connection to think about, that many people being influenced by one person in such a great way.”

DyeStat TFX manager and Illinois high school track and cross country reporter Mike Newman, who died last week, was also college runner for Carius and part of North Central's 1982 national championship team. That team is set to be inducted into NCC's Hall of Fame on Oct. 4.

Contact David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidWoods007.