Jennifer Michel is entering her 17th season as head men's and women's cross country coach (22nd overall as a head or assistant coach) at Western Colorado University in 2023. She will also begin her 17th season as an assistant coach of the Mountaineer track & field team.
Entering Fall 2023, Michel has coached 60 Mountaineers to 226 All-American honors between cross country and indoor/outdoor track & field.
A testament to the quality of these All-Americans, Michel has coached 10 individuals to a combined 19 National Championships. Standing tall amongst these individuals is Alicja Konieczek who recorded her ninth National Championship in 2019. Konieczek became the first female Mountaineer to win four National Championships in the same year as she took the Mile and 3k indoors and the Steeplechase and 5k outdoors in 2017.
On the track, Michel has coached national champions David Goodman to the steeplechase title in 2011, Ryan Haebe (2012 Steeplechase), Tyler Pennel (2012 10k), Gabe Proctor (2013 10k & 5k), Vegard Olstad (2013 1500), and Alicja Konieczek (2017 Indoor Mile/3,000m and Outdoor Steeplechase/5,000m). National runners-up coached by Michel include Lauren Kleppin in the 10,000-meter run (2011 and 2012), Tyler Pennel in the 5,000-meter run (2009, 2011-12), Hillory Davis (2011 Steeplechase), Glen Watts (2010 Steeplechase), and Lisa Thomas (2009 Steeplechase).
Additionally, Michel's distance runners have broken more than a dozen school records across the spectrum of indoor and outdoor races including 2017's monumental performances by Alicja Konieczek as she broke the indoor Mile, indoor 3k, and Steeplechase records. Konieczek's 9:49.74 effort at the Payton Jordan Invite also reset the All-Time NCAA DII Women's Steeplechase record.
In addition, 12 of her distance runners have gone on to capture 16 Academic All-America nods including first team selections Loren Ahonen (2010-11), Tyler Pennel (2012), Lauren Kleppin (2012), Ryan Haebe (2015), Georgia Porter (2017), and Alicja Konieczek (2018-19 and twice named Athlete of the Year). In 2019, Taylor Stack was named the USTFCCCA Division II Men's Cross Country Scholar Athlete of the Year.
A two-time National Coach of the Year, Michel is also a five-time RMAC Coach of the Year, and earned both the men's and women's honors in 2011. In a strong year for Michel and the Mountaineers, she also was named USTFCCCA Central Region Women's Coach of the Year in 2011. During the 2017 outdoor track and field season, Michel was named USTFCCCA Central Region Women’s Assistant Coach of the Year before being named USTFCCCA Women’s National Assistant Coach of the Year in 2017 for outdoor track. During the historic 2018 indoor campaign, Michel was named USTFCCCA Women's National Assistant Coach of the Year.
Michel also made history when she became the first woman in any sport at any NCAA level to earn a National Coach of the Year honor for a men’s sport in 2007. Subsequently she would become the first woman to repeat this honor with her 2011 selection.
Michel’s cross country teams have accumulated one national championship, six runner-up finish, and one third-place finish since 2007.
In 2020, the Mountaineer women's cross country team won the RMAC title for the first time since 2012 (no nationals were held due to COVID-19). In 2019, Western's women's team took fourth place at nationals while the men finished seventh. In the 2017 cross country campaign, the Mountaineer men finished fourth, returning to the podium for the first time since 2013.
During the 2016 season, the Mountaineer women rode an impressive top three finishing order of 8, 11, 22 by Porter, Konieczek, and Seward to a third place team. This was the first podium finish for the Mountaineer women since 2013.
In a historic effort, Michel coached the 2011 Mountaineer men to the fourth-lowest team score in NCAA DII history en route to her first national championship. Simultaneously, she coached her first individual National Champion in cross country as Ryan Haebe broke the tape ahead of teammate Tyler Pennel, highlighting a 1,2,5,7,12 finish for the men. The top-ranked women were upset by a mere four points in 2011, finishing in second place for the second year in a row. The Mountaineers also swept the RMAC titles in 2011 with the women claiming their second-straight conference title for just the second time in program history.
As a first year head coach she led the Western's men to a second-place finish at the NCAA Division II National Championships. The women finished sixth. Following the season, Michel earned a spot in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd” segment based upon her historic achievements.
As an athlete, Michel earned eight All-American honors in track and field and cross country. In track and field, Michel won Division II titles in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, 3,000-meter run and indoor mile, and held the national championship steeplechase record until 2008. She was a six-time RMAC champion.
Michel earned RMAC All-Century honors in women's track and field as part of the conference centennial celebration in 2008-09. She was also a member of the NCAA 25th Anniversary Team for Women's Track and Field and was the 1999 NCAA Cross Country Runner of the Year.
After her collegiate career, she finished fifth at the US Track and Field Championships in the steeplechase in 2002. She entered the Mountaineer Sports Hall of Fame in October 2010 for her national championship career as a Western student-athlete.
Michel, a prep product out of Wheat Ridge, Colo., is a 2001 graduate of Western with a degree in History and Secondary Education. She went on to receive her master’s degree in Sports Management from California University of Pennsylvania in 2007.
She lives in Gunnison with her husband Bryan Wickenhauser and two daughters, Gianna and Eliza.
