Head Coach Damon Martin has built the Adams State University cross country and track programs to the absolute premiere level, not only at Division II, but in all of collegiate athletics. Winner of 30 National Coach of the Year awards, Martin is recognized as one of the best coaches in the country, especially with distance runners, his specialty.
After 23 years in charge of the women’s program and 17 at the helm of the men’s (including an interim year in 1988), Martin has coached a total of 26 National Championship teams (17 women’s cross country, 6 men’s cross country, 1 women's indoor track & field, 1 men's indoor track & field, 1 men's outdoor track & field), including a stretch of nine straight women’s cross country titles from 1991-99, another stretch of seven straight women's titles from 2003-09 and a stretch of three straight men's cross country national titles (2008-10). He has also guided athletes to 874 combined all-America honors and 91 individual national championships while coaching seven national championship relay teams.
In 2012, Martin guided the ASU men's outdoor track & field teams to the NCAA DII title, the first outdoor national title in the history of the Adams State. Also during the 2012 season, the women's squad climbed atop the national rankings for the first time in program history on April 25.
Martin has also guided his men’s XC and track & field teams to four straight USTFCCCA NCAA Division II Program of the Year honors, awarded to the school with the best combined finish at the national championships in cross country, as well as indoor and outdoor track & field. The award, which was handed out for the first time following the 2008-09 seasons, has never benn given to a men’s team besides Adams State. The ASU men's five points in the Program of the Year standings at the end of the 2011-12 seasons were the best score in the award's history (runner-up finishes in XC and indoor track & field and an outdoor track & field national title). His women’s teams during the four-year existence of the Program of the Year Award have claimed four runner-up honors.
Martin first came to Alamosa in the fall of 1985 after a brilliant collegiate career at the University of Arkansas-Monticello, where he was a two-time All-American and seven-time All-Conference middle distance runner. His career highlight was a second place finish in the National Championship 1,500-meter event. After earning his bachelor of arts degree in the summer of 1985, he came to Adams State as a graduate assistant for the women’s cross country and track programs.
The next year, Martin finished his master’s degree while working at Valley Athletics and training under the Reebok flag. He continued training after completing his masters’ degree in the spring of 1985 and was the director of Alamosa Health Club’s Sports Injury Prevention program. In 1988, Martin competed in the United States Olympic Trials.
Martin then caught his big break which vaulted him onto his absolutely amazing career path. In 1988, Martin was named the interim coach for the men’s cross country team, filling in for ASC coaching great Dr. Joe I. Vigil, who was coaching at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The team won their sixth consecutive NAIA National title that year.
The next spring, Martin began a teaching career serving as a half-time physical education instructor and volunteering as a men’s track and field coach. In the fall of 1989, Martin was named the head women’s cross country and track coach, but continued to serve as a half-time instructor. That year, Martin’s women won their first national title since 1981, and the second overall. After finishing second in 1990, the team was dominant, winning nine consecutive national titles from 1991-99. Martin won National Coach of the Year honors every year in that streak. In 1995, he also won the Women’s Outdoor Track and Field Coach of the Year award after leading ASC to a fifth place finish at the national meet.
OTHER NATIONAL COACH AND STREAKS, TRACK TITLES
In 1996, Martin was named the head coach of the men’s programs and has never looked back. He began with the rebuilding of the team that had gone though tough times the year before, not qualifying for the national cross country championships for the first time in school history. Soon after Martin took over, he returned the program to dominance with a 1998 Dual National Championship. The Grizzlies repeated that feat for the seventh time in school history in 2003 and then the eighth and ninth times in 2008 and 2009, respectively.
In the 1999-00 school year, Martin also served as ASC’s Associate Athletic Director helping guide the entire athletic department to an even higher level. He gave up that position before the 2000-01 season to concentrate on his coaching duties but resumed his associate athletic director duties in 2006-07.
In addition to his National Coach of the Year Awards, Martin has numerous Regional and 34 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference honors, including five in the 2004-05 academic year alone. Winner of five straight RMAC Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year honors from 1995-99, Martin has won the indoor track award 13 of the 14 times it has been awarded, including in each of the last four years, when the Grizzlies have won their unprecedented 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th titles in the 15-year history of the event. Under Martin, ASC Cross Country and Track & Field teams have won a total of 40 RMAC Championships, five of which came in 2004-05 alone.
With all his success, have come special invitations. Martin has been a guest speaker at several coaching association conventions, including the 2001 National High School Coaches Convention in North Dakota. He also spoke at the Ohio State Coaches Association, the largest in the country.
Martin was also inducted into his alma-mater's athletics hall of fame in 2004 and into ASC's Hall of Fame in 2007, making him the only current Grizzly coach to earn such an honor. He was also inducted into the Arkansas State Track & Field Hall of Fame in the fall of 2007. Around the same time, Martin became a published author as he wrote "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Injury Free Running:", a book that can be purchased world-wide.
Martin graduated from Longview High School in Texas in 1981 and while at Arkansas-Monticello married Konnie, his wife of 27 years. The couple has two children; Lauren, 19; and Tanner, 15. Lauren is a redshirt freshman on the Grizzly squad this year and earned all-state honors in both cross country and track and field at Alamosa High School. Tanner is a freshman and a member of the cross country and track and field teams at Alamosa High School.
