The JBU cross-country and track and field programs are reaching new heights — individual athletes are consistently qualifying for the NAIA National Championships, and the women’s track and field team claimed the Sooner Athletic Conference Women’s Outdoor Track and Field Championship for the first time in 2025.
Both programs were resurrected after being discontinued for almost two decades.
In early 2010, former cross country runner and JBU Wall of Fame member Matt Pearson ’85 began a campaign to reinstate the cross country program, which had been discontinued for nearly 20 years. With the support of the JBU athletics department, the Golden Eagles returned to distance running in the fall of 2010. Pearson led for three years, after which Scott Schochler became head coach in 2013. Over his 11-year tenure from 2013 to 2024, athletes like Josh Uzelac ’19, Ben Martin ’21, and Allika Pearson ’22 consistently qualified for the NAIA National Championships.
Building on renewed momentum, the track and field program officially returned in fall 2019. Although the first season was canceled after just one meet due to COVID-19, it still laid a crucial foundation at a pivotal moment. With many Christian colleges facing enrollment challenges during and after COVID, JBU’s track and field program responded by creating new athletic opportunities and scholarships to attract students.
“When track was brought back in 2019, we probably had a total of about 20 athletes — just our cross country distance runners,” said Peter Cunningham, cross country and track and field head coach. “We now have 50 plus. The moment you introduce track, you’re introducing a year-round competition rather than just cross country, so you’re able to attract a higher caliber of athlete, and people take your program a little bit more seriously.”
After a period of growth, Cunningham — having learned under Schochler — became the head coach in 2024 and continues to develop the program.
“A lot of times, you have untapped, talented athletes who haven’t reached their ceiling. While we’re really excited to bring in athletes that are already running fast times or have good marks in field events, we’re not scared of athletes that look like they have potential but aren’t really there yet,” Cunningham said.
Alongside this focus on athlete potential, Cunningham emphasizes recruiting individuals who fit the program’s culture.
“We hope to have a culture in our program of Jesus being king,” he said. “We’re not exclusively recruiting followers of Jesus, but we do want to protect the culture of ‘first and foremost we’re chasing after Jesus.’ We think that as we make Jesus number one, that feeds into raising the bar for the performance and training side of things.”
From an athlete’s perspective, the teams offer not only physical and athletic growth but also a community for personal and spiritual growth through student-led Bible studies and one-on-one mentorship meetings with the coaching staff.
Matthew Cook, the men’s team captain, said the coaching staff is constantly reminding the athletes of why they run. He said his time at JBU has changed him from the overconfident freshman he once was.
“We have a Growth Group, and we pray before practice. Peter will bring up scripture,” Cook said. “I came to JBU as a national Costa Rican champion, and I thought I was the best and had this prideful approach to running. I had never trained with anyone else. But over time, being here at JBU — going to chapel, church and being around faculty that love the Lord — I started to realize that my identity is not in running but in the Lord.”
Beyond recruiting athletes, Cunningham enhanced the team’s environment by developing Pollard’s Field, a new home cross country course set up near the JBU president’s house where Chip and Carey Pollard live.
“We wanted to host meets so we didn’t have to travel as many times throughout the year, and it created a fun opportunity for friends of our athletes to get to watch their friends race,” Cunningham said. “I spent a lot of time mowing the grass and remeasuring the correct distance. We have had a lot of help from my assistant coach, Ben Ledbetter, and a lot of athletes will come out in between classes to help with the mowing and landscaping of the woods.”
The highlight of the new home course came in fall 2025, when Pollard’s Field hosted the 2025 Sooner Athletic Cross Country Championships.
So far, the crowning achievement of Cunningham’s tenure has been the women’s track and field team’s first-place finish in the 2025 Sooner Athletic Outdoor Track and Field Championships.
“We had a couple of strong powerhouses coming out into that meet like Anna Keys ’25 and Evie Scoles ’25, and they were just competing in a lot of different events, which is a lot of points coming in,” said junior Regan Cartmill, the women’s team captain. “But then on a more individual level, we had a lot of people who were willing to contribute — who were willing to put in the work and do hard things.”
Cartmill said one of her favorite moments from last year’s championship win was when a senior ran the 10K for the first time and did well enough to score a point — in the end, JBU beat the second-place team by a one-point margin.
Cartmill said the fact that the coaches did not put a lot of pressure on the teams to win the conference championship meet helped bring out the best in the athletes.
“We kind of came in expecting maybe like a second or a third or something like that, but then as the days were progressing, we were like, ‘No, we actually really have a shot at this,’” she said. “But then the coaches weren’t like, ‘Oh my gosh, you have to run these times and start doing all that.’”
Success in track and field is important, but to Cunningham, building a strong community between the runners and God is worth much more.
“I love the idea of building a program as opposed to just coaching at a program with a ton of resources and a ton of money that’s already arrived and has this top-level elite competition history,” he said. “I think there’s no reason why JBU, with the DNA of the entire university, can’t be a place that attracts great character, Christ-fearing, fast athletes. I think we can be a competitive program, and I don’t intend to go anywhere. This is a sweet place to be.”
This article is from the summer 2026 edition of the Brown Bulletin. Access the full issue.