{"id":44754,"date":"2016-08-17T16:57:38","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T23:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=44754"},"modified":"2016-08-17T16:57:38","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T23:57:38","slug":"michael-smith-named-director-nau-cross-country-track-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/michael-smith-named-director-nau-cross-country-track-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Smith named director of NAU Cross Country and Track and Field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Michael Smith<\/strong>, former head coach at Georgetown University,\u00a0has been named director of Cross Country and Track and Field for Northern Arizona University.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Smith comes to NAU with championship experience and a background in altitude training. He spent the last four years at Georgetown, most recently serving as the director and head coach of the Men\u2019s and Women\u2019s Cross Country and Track and Field programs during the 2015-16 school year. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Prior to Georgetown, Smith lived in Flagstaff for six years and founded Team Run Flagstaff, while also working under Jack Daniels at NAU&#8217;s Center for High Altitude Training.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">&#8220;NAU, our student-athletes and the Flagstaff community all benefit by bringing Michael Smith home. His experience and reputation will also ensure that we are able to maintain our strong recruitment efforts,&#8221; NAU President <strong>Rita Cheng<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">During Smith\u2019s four-year stint with the Georgetown Hoyas, he coached 47 All-Americans, 23 NCAA championship qualifiers and two Olympic trials participants. In 2015, the Georgetown men\u2019s cross country team won the Big East Championship, going on to place 10th at the NCAA National Championship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">To provide a seamless transition,\u00a0Smith will join the team this fall semester, while <strong>Eric Heins<\/strong>, current director of Cross County and Track and Field, continues coaching. Heins will retire with a resume of 29 Big Sky Championships, eight top-10 national finishes and 27 Big Sky Coach of the Year honors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Read more on the <a href=\"http:\/\/nauathletics.com\/sports\/xc\/2016-17\/releases\/20160816l49cjg\">NAU Athletics website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/michael-smith-named-director-nau-cross-country-track-field\/\">Michael Smith, former head coach at Georgetown University,\u00a0has been named director of Cross Country and Track and Field for Northern Arizona University.\u00a0 Smith comes to NAU with championship experience and a background in altitude training. He spent the last four years at Georgetown, most recently serving as the director and head coach of the Men\u2019s&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":44765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}