men's cross country Coaches

Co-captain of the 1993 men's cross country team and a four-year runner for the Saints in cross country and indoor and outdoor track, John Newman became the head coach of the men's cross country program in 2001.  He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in sports studies in the spring of 1994 and his Master's Degree in education in 2001. 

Newman has played a major role in the success of the men's cross country program which includes active streaks of 18 straight conference titles and five straight New York State Collegiate Track Conference championships. He guided St. Lawrence to the 2011 NCAA Regional Championship, the third in program history ('97 and '00) as well as the program's best finish at the NCAA Championship race in 2010, finishing third overall. Newman, a native of Canton, NY, has coached 10 All-Americans and 12 individual conference champions in cross country and was the Liberty League Cross Country Coach of the Year seven times (04, 05, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11). 

In track and field, his teams have won three NYSCTC indoor championships, back-to-back ECAC Indoor Championships and two Liberty League indoor championships during his tenure. The Saint men's team has had three All Americas including a national champion during his tenure.

Newman is a member of USA Track and Field and the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA).  He was an honorary inductee into Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK) in the spring of 2011.

Kate Curran, a former Penn State cross country and track and field athlete, joined the Saint staff as head women's track and field coach and assistant cross country coach in the fall of 2008 and earned Liberty League Indoor Coach of the Year honors in her first season as a collegiate head coach. She was named Liberty League indoor Coach of the Year for the 2012 season. Her teams have had three top ten finishes in the Deb Vercauteren Program of the Year Award.

She is  president of the New York State Collegiate Track Conference and is the Atlantic Regional representative to the NCAA Cross Country and Track and Field Committee.

Curran came to St. Lawrence from Susquehanna University where she served as an assistant coach. She holds a USATF Level 1 Coaching certification and was Gatorade Sport Camp Hydration Manager at the Penn State summer sports camps. She coached distance and mid-distance runners along with pole vaulters at Susquehanna and had two NCAA qualifiers in the vault in the 2006-07 season.

As a Penn State undergraduate, she was a member of the Nittany Lion cross country and track and field teams and was varsity cross country captain as a senior. She was a member of the 2004 Big Ten Champion women's track and field team and earned Penn State and Big Ten Scholar-Athlete awards and was the recipient of the Big Ten Sportsmanship Award in 2005.

Dr. Sam Vandervelde will serve as the men's cross country team's Faculty/Staff Mentor for the 2012-13 season.  

Vandervelde joined the faculty at St. Lawrence University in the fall of 2007. Since then he has launched a student problem solving seminar, written a textbook for the department proofs course, initiated a friendly mathematical rivalry with other New York colleges, and taken the lead in organizing the Festival of Science, an annual event showcasing student research. He strives to provide a lively, engaging mathematical experience for his students, both in and out of the classroom.

Prior to arriving at St. Lawrence he participated in a number of math circles in the San Francisco Bay Area, forming and directing the Stanford Math Circle for two years. Dr. Vandervelde has also taught at Wellesley College for three semesters and at the Roxbury Latin School, a private boys school in the Boston area, for five years. He writes and oversees the Mandelbrot Competition, a national high school math contest.

Dr. Vandervelde's mathematical interests encompass number theory, graph theory, combinatorics, and Euclidean geometry. Current research includes work on arithmetic graph sums and new partition identities. Other projects include revising and polishing a textbook entitled Bridge to Higher Mathematics.