Kuzara becomes Johnnie head cross country coach

With the start of a new cross country season comes the start of a new head coaching legacy. Following the retirement of 44-year seasoned veteran Tim Miles, new head coach Maxwell Kuzara looks to continue St. John’s cross country’s success.

Kuzara, a 2017 St. John’s graduate, earned the job of head coach following three years as assistant coach under Miles. During his time as a runner at St. John’s, Kuzara obtained many achievements including All-MIAC honors in 2016 for the 10,000-meters MIAC Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Now, Kuzara looks for a successful time as the head coach for St. John’s.

Due to his familiarity with the team, Kuzara is a step ahead of most first-time head coaches.

“I know all the guys already…I had a pretty good understanding of all that goes on…Obviously, it’s busy; there’s a lot of things to do,” Kuzara said.

Before coming to St. John’s to coach, Kuzara spent time coaching at the high school level as an assistant coach at Minnetonka High School. Through his experience, Kuzara saw how important individual leadership is to a sport like cross country.

Due to the wide variety of runners in cross country, runners set their own running schedule. One of Kuzara’s key coaching points is based off individual leadership.

“Let the guys take the lead on things. We want them to take a lot of ownership over their own training and their own running career,” Kuzara said.

Kuzara, during his time as assistant coach and now as head coach, has developed much of his own coaching methodology from his former coach, Miles.

“That’s something that Tim [Miles] always did…I ran here too, and that’s how I went through the program as well. I think that’s really important; give them ownership…We expect that they know themselves better than I know them,” Kuzara said.

It came as no surprise to many when Kuzara got the job as head coach. Miles was delighted and not surprised when Kuzara got the job as head coach following Miles’ retirement.

“Maxwell [Kuzara] is the person I hoped would get the job and, as I anticipated, the transition for the team has been seamless. St. John’s cross country is in the best possible hands,” Miles said via email.

Miles said that Kuzara was a significant mentor for him and still contributes greatly to coaching the team.

“He’s our very overqualified volunteer assistant coach…In terms of a mentor, I don’t even know where I start…I learned everything [from him],” Miles said.

Although cross country is more of an individual sport, the team aspect of the sport is also important to the SJU runners. As Kuzara points out, the runners care more about the team than they do about their own statistics.

“We’re all about the team…We want the team to do well. Cross country guys are just good people…They have that team aspect. They want to do it together…I love that about them, and this group is no different,” Kuzara said.

Outside of scouting top runners for the team, Kuzara looks for runners that just love to run.

“You basically just want guys that love to run, and they want to get better and they’re willing to put in the work that you need to do to get better. . .The biggest thing to success in this sport is training year-round; running every day almost, year-round,” Kuzara said.

Despite being a first-time head coach, Kuzara has high expectations and goals for the team this season.

“First off, we just hope everybody’s running their best at the end of the year…Hopefully we’ll be competitive at the year on the conference and national level,” Kuzara said.

Kuzara and the cross country team look for a great performance at the next outing on Sept. 29 in Colfax, Wis., and look forward to a great season.