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Tom Raunig is in his 12th year as cross country and track and field coach at the University of Montana and his 23rd year of coaching track and field overall. He spent two seasons coaching at the high school level, two seasons at the NCAA Division III level and is now in his 19th year at the NCAA Division I level.
In the last 12 months, Raunig has coached the six Grizzly squads under his guidance to Big Sky Conference and region success.
The 2007 outdoor season produced six individual Big Sky Conference champions and saw seven athletes advance to the NCAA Midwest Regional.
UM’s distance and middle distance coach, Raunig coached freshman Kara DeWalt to a school-record steeplechase performance in her first year of collegiate competition.
At the 2007 Big Sky Conference cross country meet, the Montana women placed third, the Grizzlies’ third-straight top-three finish.
Freshman Katrina Drennen capped a successful first-year campaign by earning All-Big Sky Conference honors with her sixth-place individual finish.
At the 2008 Big Sky Conference Indoor Championships, Raunig led the women’s team to a fourth-place tie with 94 points, just a point and a half out of third. It marked the team’s best finish since 1994, while the 94 points were the most ever scored by Montana at a conference indoor championships.
Raunig’s personal evolution from All-America runner to head coach is the result of a wide variety of experiences he enjoyed during his running and early coaching career, which came under some of America’s finest running mentors.
As a distance runner at the University of Montana in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Raunig initially trained under Harley Lewis, the coach who led the Grizzlies to seven Big Sky Conference cross country titles.
Following Lewis’s retirement, Raunig was coached by Marshall Clark for two years. Clark had previously led Stanford to a second-place finish at the 1968 men’s cross country national championships and had coached a number of the nation’s top distance runners, including Don Kardong, the fourth-place finisher at the 1976 Olympic marathon, Tony Sandoval, the 1980 U.S. Olympic Trials marathon champion, and Duncan McDonald, the former American five-kilometer record holder.
For Raunig’s final two years at UM, he was coached by Larry Heidebrecht. Heidebrecht would later go on to coach UTEP to the 1983 NCAA cross country national championship.
Following his collegiate career, Raunig moved to Eugene, Ore., where he trained under Bob Sevene. Sevene coached Joan Benoit to the gold medal in the marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and continues to coach many of the nation’s top runners.
A native of Havre, Mont., Raunig joined the Grizzlies in 1977 and left the program in 1982 as an All-American. He earned that honor by finishing ninth in the 10,000 meters at the 1982 NCAA championships. Earlier that season, Raunig set the Montana record in the 10,000 meters with a time of 28:40.24, a mark that still stands.
After earning his degree in secondary education, Raunig spent three years training under Sevene in Eugene, Ore., and competing for Athletics West, Nike’s elite track team. Raunig ran a personal-best 2:12:56 marathon, was sixth at the 1982 New York City Marathon and was 10th at the 1984 Olympic Trials marathon.
Raunig returned to western Montana in 1985 and coached at both Hellgate and Frenchtown high schools while earning his master’s degree from UM in sports science.
In 1987, Raunig was hired at Montana State to coach the men’s cross country team and serve as the distance coach for the track and field teams. During his seven years with the Bobcats, Raunig guided the Montana State cross country team to a Big Sky Conference title in 1993 and runner-up finishes in 1988 and 1992.
Raunig was named the league’s cross country coach of the year in 1993 and coached Shannon Butler to two NCAA track titles and five all-America finishes.
Raunig also earned his Ed.D in higher education administration from Montana State in 1995.
After seven years in Bozeman, Raunig was hired as the cross country and track and field coach at Upper Iowa, an NCAA Division III school in Fayette, Iowa. In two seasons at UIU, Raunig established a women’s cross country program, was named the 1995 Iowa Athletic Conference Coach of the Year for men’s cross country and had athletes set 24 school records.
Raunig returned to his alma mater in 1996.
Individual Montana highlights under Raunig include Sabrina Monro’s second-place finish at the 2000 NCAA cross country championships, Antony Ford’s cross country all-America finishes in 2002 and 2003, and Scott McGowan’s four track all-America honors.
Team highlights include the 2000 and 2006 women’s cross country teams’ second-place BSC finishes and the 2002 men’s outdoor track and field team’s second-place league finish.
Raunig is married to the former Katie Nicholson.
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