SEATTLE – When Chris Reed arrived at Seattle Pacific in December of 2013 as an assistant coach, the fall cross country season had just ended, and the winter indoor track schedule was rapidly approaching its start.
 
So it's not an exaggeration to say Reed had to hit the ground running.
 
And for the past 10 years, he has just kept going.
 
 

Now the associate head coach and the distance coach for the Falcons, Reed has announced that he will be stepping away at the end of this spring's track season. He and his wife Annie are relocating to Portland, where she recently started a job with a company that specializes in running footwear.
 
"I was in my mid-20s, and it was a big shift moving up to this amazing city," said Reed, a native of Klamath Falls in southern Oregon and a graduate of Western Oregon University in Monmouth. "It was one of those (decisions) where I felt confident that if I was here for a long time, I would be happy with it.
 
"I didn't necessarily expect to be here this long, but that's a testament to how great the journey has been and how amazing this place has treated me over the years," he added. "It's definitely a bittersweet moment. It's equal parts excitement and a little bit of melancholy, as well."
 
 

Reed and SPU head coach / program director Karl Lerum have helped keep the Falcons at or near the top of the track and cross country ladder in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. During their decade together, the Falcons won three GNAC indoor women's team titles outright, shared one with Central Washington, and captured five outdoor team titles. The women's cross country team raced in three national meets, most recently in 2019.
 
"He has impacted so many student-athletes and colleagues in a positive way during his time here. He'll obviously be missed," Lerum said. "I've long since stopped thinking of Chris as my assistant. We're colleagues that have done the best we could during the time we had together here.
 
"We've experienced some pretty exciting moments from our teams, and obviously some lows, as well," Lerum added. "That's what happens when you get to spend time with people, and he has been real important to my family, as well."
 
That feeling is definitely mutual.
 
"I couldn't have asked for a better boss or a better colleague or a better friend than Karl," Reed said. "Beyond working with the student-athletes, working with Karl is the thing I'm going to miss the most."
 
 

Colin Boutin has run under Reed's guidance since the fall of 2017. Now a grad student and wrapping up his final SPU outdoor track season (he was among the student-athletes granted additional eligibility by the NCAA because of the pandemic shutdown) Boutin has gone from just getting by to now looking at taking one more run at the school record for the 10,000 meters. (That attempt will come at next month's GNAC Championships.)
 
"My freshman year coming into college from high school, I wasn't the best. I was good enough to make the team, but I was on the bottom end with the other incoming freshmen," Boutin said. "Chris saw the potential in me and saw how, given a little more time and a little more extra development, I could do some great things."
 
The 2018-19 year was an especially big one for Reed's distance runners. During the fall, the women's cross country team placed 15th among 32 schools at the NCAA nationals, after a third-place finish at GNAC and fourth at the NCAA West Regionals..
 
Even now, that performance at NCAAs remains one of Reed's most satisfying experiences during his time here.
 
"That was a really special moment for us," Reed recalled. "We had a phenomenal team going into the year, and then the roster that ended the year was different than the roster that started the year. We were essentially written off, and somehow we rallied to sneak into the national championships. There was a lot of character and belief in that team. It's a really special group that I'll cherish forever."
 
In the spring of 2019, Jesse Phan pulled off a stunning victory in the GNAC men's 800 meters. A couple weeks later, Kate Lilly ran to an All-American fifth-place finish in the 5000 meters at NCAAs.
 
But as Reed tells it, results aren't the whole picture.
 
"It's not the accomplishments, it's the stories behind them," he said. "The only thing that makes sports interesting to those of us who love it is context. The stories that these student-athletes have written over these last 9 ½ years that I've been here is what makes this job so special."
 

Reed hasn't limited his efforts to just coaching. He also has served as the director of the Falcon Running Camp, has been the West Region women's cross country ranker for the last eight seasons, currently is president of the Division II Cross Country Executive Committee, and is part of NCAA Division II Coaches Connection program.
 
"It's passion about the sport as a whole and the health and prosperity for the sports of cross country and track," he said. "I've seen opportunities on these committees to lean into that work, and make meaningful changes to protect the well-being of student-athletes and help them have the best collegiate experience they can have, and continually looking out for their best interests."
 
Having graduated from Western Oregon in 2011 with a degree in economics and a minor in business, Reed didn't, at that particular time, see himself making a career of coaching. But now, there's nothing else he'd rather do, and is confident opportunities will come along for him to get back into it after making the move to Portland.
 
"When I came to SPU, by that point, I knew (coaching) was a career for me," he said. "That's also what makes this moment so hard because I'm all-in, and it's tough to have a little bit of uncertainty in the short-term future.
 
"But in the end, it's going to work out in some capacity," Reed added. "I don't know exactly where, how, or when, but I feel called to do this. As long as somebody values what I can bring, I'll be on the side of some track holding a stopwatch pretty soon."