Having successfully continued a long-standing tradition of success with Seattle Pacific’s track and field teams, Karl Lerum is now in his eighth year as director of the school’s entire running program, including cross country, having taken on that role in the fall of 2013.
Lerum is heading into his 16th year in charge of the SPU track program. In 2019, for the eighth time in school history, and all under his leadership, the Falcon women pulled an indoor-outdoor GNAC team title sweep. Both of the '19 wins came by four-point margins against Central Washington, 154-150 indoors and 166-162 outdoors.
A few weeks after the season ended, Lerum was named the 2019 GNAC women's outdoor Coach of the Year. He also won the indoor coaching honor for 2019, the sixth time he has taken both in the same season. He now has 18 GNAC coaching awards altogether: nine for indoors and nine for outdoors.
He also has six West Region women's indoor Coach of the Year awards and four outdoor awards, thereby giving him 28 conference and region honors altogether between the winter and spring seasons.
Of Seattle Pacific’s 13 conference indoor team championships, Lerum has been the man in charge for 11 of those.
The pandemic-affected 2020 season still had its share of Falcon successes, highlighted by a pair of individual GNAC indoor titles: Kate Lilly in the 3000 meters and Peace Igbonagwam in the long jump. SPU also posted 11 NCAA Division II provisional qualifying marks, with two athletes – Igbonagwam in the long jump and Dania Holmberg in the 3000 and 5000 meters – earning invitations to the nationals in Birmingham, Ala. However, that meet, along with the bulk of the outdoor season (every meet except the opener) were canceled because of the coronavirus.
During the 2019 indoor season, the Falcon women posted 12 NCAA provisional qualifying marks, and sent three athletes (Scout Cai in the pentathlon and pole vault, Peace Igbonagwam in the long jump, and Kate Lilly in the mile) to the nationals, Outdoors, SPU racked up another dozen provisional marks, and four athletes (Cai in the heptathlon and pole vault, Lilly and Dania Holmberg in the 1500 and 5000, and Kaylee Mitchell in the steeplechase) were at nationals.
Igbonagwam made first-team All-American in the indoor long, Lilly was first team in the outdoor 5000 and second team in the indoor mile, and Cai was first team outdoorsd in the hep and pole vault.
Lerum stepped up to the Falcons’ coaching helm in October 2005, taking over from Jack Hoyt. He worked as an assistant to Hoyt in 2000, and again in 2003. In between, he spent two years as an assistant coach at Trinity College, an NCAA Division III school in Hartford, Conn.
While Lerum has coached numerous athletes with impressive accomplishments at SPU, he has quite an impressive athletic background of his own.
As an athlete at Pacific Lutheran University in nearby Tacoma, Lerum made his mark in two sports. On the football field, he set – and still owns – the school career records for receptions and receiving yards. On the track, Lerum has the Lutes record in the 400 meters and is among the school's top 10 in the decathlon, 110 hurdles, long jump, 100 meters, and javelin. He was an All-American in the decathlon, finishing third at the NAIA nationals in 1996 and second in '97 and '98.
He didn’t stop there. After college, Lerum was on the San Francisco 49ers’ roster for the 1998 and 1999 preseason, and played with the Amsterdam Admirals in NFL Europe. In 2003 and again in 2004, he served as the head coach of the Oslo Vikings football program in Norway.
Lerum is a graduate of Franklin Pierce High School in Parkland, south of Tacoma. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from PLU and a master’s in history from Trinity.
He and son Lukas live in Seattle.
