By Christopher Hunt
Another Iona College coach is moving on. Assistant coach Jake Stewart has accepted a job as the head cross country coach and assistant track and field coach at Lamar University in Beaumont, Tx.
“I felt like I was in a good spot,” Stewart said. “I’ve been at Iona two-plus years, three cross country seasons. I felt like I was at a point where if I wanted to grow as a coach I really had to learn by doing.”
Stewart becomes the third coach to leave Iona since before the summer. Former assistant Sam Burroughs took a job as the head cross country coach at Abilene Christian University, also in Texas. Former head coach Mick Byrne, who is credited for building a perennial national championship contender at Iona, left for the heading coaching job at Wisconsin for the start of the cross country season. Stewart will start officially at Lamar on Jan. 5.
Stewart spent two years and three cross country seasons at Iona, where the men’s team has finished second at the NCAA Championships for the past two years in cross country. The team’s success and working under Byrne’s tutelage made Stewart --just 26 years old -- a prime candidate to take over a building program focused on distance running. Lamar’s men’s team has won three straight Southland Conference cross country championships.
“He’s put in his time at Iona College and I think it’s great to see young coaches serve their time as an apprentice and move on,” said Byrne, who also coached Stewart at Iona. “I think in a program like Iona, that’s competed for a national championship for several years, that it doesn’t make sense for (assistant coaches) to leave to be an assistant somewhere else. I always say to an assistant coach that you put in your two or three years and then it’s time to move onto something else.”
Stewart comes from a coaching family. His father, Joe Stewart, is the head cross country coach at Kelso High School in Kelso, Wash., where he had the track at the school named in his honor. He was the head track coach for 22 years before retiring in 2005.
“I’ve literally been around the sport my entire life,” Jake Stewart said.
Stewart worked with the distance runners at Iona and did much of the recruiting for a team that won 17 straight MAAC conference championships. His leadership skills showed even has an undergraduate at Iona becoming the first walk-on in the program’s history to be named team captain. Now he says that he’s ready to take over his own program.
“I’m nervous,” he said. “But it’s a good nervous. I’m antsy. I’ve made contact with a lot of kids on the team. I’m ready to get settled and get started.”
In the meantime, Stewart needs to focus on more pressing matters.
“Right now it’s the little things,” he said, “like finding a place to live and a finding a job for my wife.”
Reach Christopher Hunt at chunt@armorytrack.com.