Once an Olympic hopeful, Marian’s new track & field coach leads team to national title

(MIRROR INDY) — Her most bitter disappointment set the stage for her most glorious triumph.

Katie Wise, once one of America’s fastest sprinters, has become the first woman to lead a men’s track and field team to a national indoor title at any collegiate level. Earlier this month Marian University won a national championship in the NAIA, an organization of 237 small colleges.

“It definitely makes it a little more special, knowing it hasn’t been done before,” said Wise, who is in her first year as head coach at the Indianapolis university.

This was not fulfillment of some master plan.

If it had been up to her, she would be winding up a career as an athlete. Maybe Wise, now 31, could have been an Olympic medalist. In 2014, she was one of the world’s 10 fastest women age 20 and younger.

The former Indiana State sprinter kept trying to come back from a hamstring pull. Doctors finally advised her that they had never seen anyone come back from an injury so severe.

Wise shifts gears to join Marian

Wise thought she was going to be a high school teacher and coach. Instead, she began at Marian in fall 2017 as a volunteer assistant coach for the Knights. She became part time, then full time. Then recruiting coordinator.

Then coach Mike Holman retired after last season — a year in which Marian was third in the NAIA indoors, second (by two points) outdoors. Wise was promoted to lead a young staff.

“It was time for the old man to get out of the way and let them go,” said Holman, 69. “The reality is, they were ready.”

Holman conceded he had misgivings about Wise as successor to lead men’s and women’s programs because of her age.

Athletic director Steve Downing, a former Indiana University basketball player under coach Bob Knight, did not share such doubt. Downing had persuaded Holman to stay two extra seasons to mentor Wise. The Marian AD didn’t interview anyone else.

“I was impressed with her. And I watched how she did it,” Downing said. “She did all the right things. She’s exactly what you want in a coach. I just hope I can keep her awhile.”

Wise also met her fiance while coaching at Marian. Kind Butler, 35, is a former Big Ten sprint champion at IU who was on a U.S. team that set a world record in the indoor 4×400 relay. He was training at Marian.

Wise recruits athletes with 21st Century tools

Marian is a private Catholic school whose 200-acre campus is 4 miles northwest of downtown. Undergraduate enrollment is about 2,700, and one-third of those are athletes in 26 sports.

Marian has long featured a cycling program — it has 51 national collegiate championships — and is up to six NAIA titles in other sports (two football, two women’s basketball, one women’s volleyball, one men’s indoor track).

Holman won two boys state titles and had two runners-up while at Lawrence Central High School. When he arrived at Marian in 2012, the men’s and women’s teams had 40 athletes collectively.

Now that number is 150.

“That was the only thing I was concerned about: If I’m leading a room with 150 kids, are they going to listen to me?” Wise said. “Are they going to respect me?

“I’m not going to change who I am as a person. I just want to make sure they trust me and have good relationships.”

As chief recruiter, Wise assembled this team. In so doing, she interacted with almost everyone and not just the sprinters she coaches directly.

“I said to myself, ‘I know these kids better than anyone,’” Wise said.

She contacts prospects, most of them in the state, through social media. Sometimes Marian finds itself competing against Indiana University or Indiana State for recruits. More often, Marian brings in undeveloped teens.

How Marian won the championship

Marian secured the team trophy March 1 in Gainesville, Florida, in the climactic 4×400-meter relay, winning in 3:09.83 — a time that would have placed fifth in the expanded Big Ten.

Leadoff runner Olivier Lifrange once represented Belgium in the under-20 European Championships. But the three others, all from Indiana high schools, never made a state final: Richard Dube (Perry Meridian), Raif Miller (Ben Davis), Eric Materna (North Judson). The 6-foot-4 Dube was a basketball player who averaged 10 points a game.

Materna said he “knew” Wise would be a successful head coach. So did Lifrange, explaining she was “upholding” sprinters as individuals and as a group.

“I believed she would be able to do the same on a larger scale,” Lifrange said. “It was definitely a step up, but she had all the tools.”

At the NAIA meet, Lifrange, Materna and Dube finished 2-3-5, respectively, for 18 points in the 600 meters — a race in which Marian was projected for zero. The Knights scored in 11 of 21 events and beat defending champion Cumberlands (Kentucky) 74-64.

In February, Marian had won a sixth straight Crossroads League championship, scoring an unheard-of 315 points. So Wise asserted the Knights’ goals have become national, not regional.

“Now, what can we do? Win an outdoors title,” she said. “We don’t want this to be just a one-time thing.”

Wise has always defied convention

Wise is a native of Morgantown (pop. 1,000) and was a state 100-meter champion for Indian Creek. However, her running style resembled a shuffle — she had virtually no knee lift — so college recruiters weren’t all that interested.

Then, as now, she defied convention.

In 2014, as a sophomore, she was fifth in the NCAA indoor 60 meters. At the USA Championships, she barely missed the 100-meter final, finishing hundredths of a second behind two Olympic relay gold medalists. That summer, Wise represented Team USA in an international meet and won two medals.

She said she has carried a passion for racing into coaching.

“Whenever I got hurt and was told I couldn’t run any more, ‘Well, track’s been my life,’ “ she said. “This is what I love doing.”

Downing, the Marian athletic director, said Wise has the temperament to coach modern athletes. She can be stern, he said, but is not a screamer.

“If they’re going to give you everything they’ve got, you have to have their heart and mind,” he said. “They have to believe in their hearts that you care about them as a person. Not how many points they can score, not how fast they can run.”

Wise has a staff of seven other coaches, six of them men. They all work together, she said, as evidenced by the cheering by the women’s team for the men’s championship.

“It was just the team there together as a family,” Wise said.

At coaches’ conventions, she doesn’t see many women in the room, even on women’s teams. Wise said many female athletes don’t feel comfortable sharing personal issues with a male coach. Moreover, she has discovered some male athletes would rather divulge problems to her than to a male coach.

Athletes view her as Team Mom. She is addressed as “Coach Katie” or “Mama Wise.”

Which is OK with her. She is the NAIA men’s coach of the year.

“This is a man’s job,” Wise said. “But I’m proving it doesn’t have to be.”

David Woods is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can reach him at dwoods1411@gmail.com or follow him on X @DavidWoods007.