Cross country and track and field teams welcome a new head coach

By Karina Hartley
Staff Reporter

As LCC moves into the fall 2026 season, the cross country and track and field programs have a new head coach in town. Starting her time at LCC last year as an assistant coach, Meredith Cahill stepped into the role of head coach over the summer.

Cahill shared some of what led up to her becoming a coach at LCC, starting with the fact that she has been running competitively since high school. “There's this ongoing joke in my family that I've actually been running marathons since I was a baby,” she shared. “Once I could hold my head up, I'd be sitting in a little baby jogger and he [Dad] would zoom around with me.” Cahill noted that her dedication to running had ingrained in her the persistence and resilience that she carries into other aspects of her life.

After high school, Cahill stopped running for a while due to some negative experiences with bad coaches. It was those experiences that lent her the drive to give coaching a shot herself. “I was really motivated to be the coach that I wish that I had,” she said. Cahill got involved coaching with several high school teams and adult running groups in her home state of Kentucky. She explained that she developed a deep love not just for the running, but for the mentoring role she got to play.

In 2024, Cahill moved to Michigan to start a PhD program in epidemiology at Michigan State, where she studies how diseases impact different demographics. The desire to coach again quickly bubbled up in her. Cahill was able to get connected with former head coach Jim Robinson and she became an assistant coach for cross country and track and field at LCC. “Pretty immediately I recognized that this was a special place,” she said, referencing the team and coaching environment.

People often find the juxtaposition of Cahill’s two careers surprising. “I feel like this position and coaching in general, it is all of my passions in one: science, education, running,” she explained. Cahill feels that  her background lends her transferrable knowledge into the coaching world. “I'm a public health scientist, so our whole thing is making sure people have the opportunities they need to thrive, and so we're getting to actually help the athletes here thrive,” she elaborated. “For me, it was just kind of a match made in heaven.”

After a year of involvement in the coaching space as an assistant coach, Robinson’s position as head coach opened up, and Cahill felt motivated to step into his role. Cahill had worked with directly with Robinson, who had been a coach at the college for nearly 30 years and had multiple national championships under his belt. “I feel so honored to get to carry on the legacy that he has created,” Cahill shared. “I’m just super excited to have more of a leadership role and start to really be able to put in place some of the different visions that I have for the program and growing it and really building on the foundation that Coach Robinson left.”

LCC Athletic Director Greg Lattig is grateful that Cahill is carrying on the torch of success for LCC’s championship-winning teams. “Meredith is familiar with our program and its rich tradition. She is motivated, knowledgeable, and professional,” he said.

Cahill is feeling optimistic about recruitment for this season in terms of the incoming freshmen. “We have actually more freshmen on our women's team this year than returning athletes. And so I’m super excited to see what they're going to be able to do,” she said. Lattig agrees this cross country season should be another successful one. “We expect to compete nationally at a high level in both men’s and women’s. We have strong returners that have worked hard all summer and incoming freshmen that will contribute right away,” he added

Cahill’s new role will  include some familiar faces—returning sophomore athletes already know her, as well as two the assistant coaches—which will provide a sense of continuity within the transition, but Cahill is more excited about the opportunities her status as head coach will provide. “I'm really excited to get to work one-on-one with the athletes and try out different types of training and figure out what works for them,” she said.

Cahill is particularly excited to build relationships with the runners, and that she will be implementing office hours so that student athletes can meet with her one-on-one to discuss goals and training. Cahill is excited for student athletes “to not only grow as runners, but as people. While you want to have the best team this season, you also need to think about all of the athletes on the team and their development over the course of their time at LCC.”

Being a part of this transitional period in students’ lives has been a fulfilling experience for her. “This is the first year a lot of these students are leaving home, and so not only are you getting to mentor them from a running perspective, but also from a life perspective and helping to create good humans that are well prepared to go out into the world,” she said. “If you're showing up authentically, being yourself, doing the work, acting with character, integrity, supporting one another, success is built from there.”

Though balancing the immediate success of the season with taking the time to build up individual students and foster a supportive environment can be a challenge, Cahill is excited to strike just the right chord: “I’m a scientist by nature. I love a puzzle.”