In his 11th season as the ASU track and field coach, Greg Kraft led the Sun Devil women to the top when they won the school's first national title at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships on March 10.
To go along with the team's accomplishment, Kraft was also named the USTFCCCA Women's National Coach of the Year.
"Awards like that - it's not one person, there's a lot of people involved in it," Kraft said. "Those types of awards really are for Arizona State track and field."
The individual award is one Kraft can add to a trophy case already filled with honors.
He won the 2007 Women's USTFCCCA West Region Coach of the Year, the 2006 USTFCCCA Women's West District Coach of the Year and the 2006 Pac-10 Coach of the Year - and that's just in the past 12 months.
Since coming to Tempe from the University of South Carolina in 1996, Kraft has taken a program that was previously haunted by violations, sanctions and lost scholarships and turned it into one that has consistently produced some of the best athletes in the history of the program as well as many highly-ranked teams.
Kraft always wanted to coach in the Pac-10, and jumped at the chance when he was offered the ASU job after being named the 1996 SEC Coach of the Year.
"Growing up in the west coast, I always wanted to coach in the Pac-10," Kraft said. "I wanted to compete against the Oregons and the UCLAs and the USCs."
The first few seasons at the helm were not easy for Kraft as he tried to rebuild the program. But the results started to turn in the Sun Devils' favor when the women's cross country team began to establish itself.
"One of our first priorities was to become competitive in cross country, and up to that point, Arizona State had never been competitive in cross country," Kraft said. "Our first flash with success was our women's cross country team when they went to nationals for the first time.
"We just wanted to have a track team, the 100 meters through the 10,000."
In his tenure at ASU, Kraft has led both sides of the track team to many individual and team honors, especially recently.
The year 2004 was a breakout one for Kraft's Sun Devils. He led current junior Jacquelyn Johnson to the NCAA heptathlon title, which was the team's first national championship since 1996.
The 2006 season was an even bigger one for the Sun Devils as Johnson won both the indoor pentathlon national title and the outdoor heptathlon national title.
Also current senior Amy Hastings won the indoor 5,000m national title and former Sun Devil Victoria Jackson won the national title in the outdoor 10,000m run.
The women's team also captured the Pac-10 championship and finished third at the NCAA Indoor Championships as well as fourth at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
Entering the 2007 season, Kraft's athletes have combined to earn 75 All-America awards, 14 relay All-America awards and five NCAA national championships.
Overall, Kraft's women's teams have finished in the top four in the nation each of the past five seasons while the men's teams have accomplished the same feat in five out of the last seven seasons.
The 2007 season has already gotten off to a great start for Kraft's teams. Seven Sun Devils earned All-American honors at the NCAA Indoor Championships, including individual shot put champion, sophomore Sarah Stevens, and Johnson, who won the individual pentathlon champion.
Kraft's former athletes have also gone on to have success internationally, including former Sun Devil Dwight Phillips, who won the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.
Kraft said he believes one of the main reasons he has been able to have so much success at ASU is because of his ability to redshirt athletes and be patient while they develop.
"A lot of times when you bring in the hot high school kid, you want to have a big splash with them immediately," Kraft said. "But we felt like to have champions in events, it takes time."
Hiring great assistant coaches is another reason Kraft believes he has been successful.
"I think that's been my strong suit, getting that kind of rising star coach and then letting them coach and letting them have their stamp on their people," Kraft said.
Kraft's influence on his assistant coaches has showed as women's throws coach David Dumble and women's distance coach Louie Quintana were both honored by being named the 2006 USTFCCCA Assistant Coaches of the Year in their events.
Many of Kraft's former assistants have also gone on to take head coaching jobs at other schools.
Even though Kraft has already accomplished so much and now has a national championship under his belt, he still feels there are still a lot of goals to be accomplished at ASU.
These goals include winning an outdoor national championship, winning a men's national championship and eventually winning the track "triple crown" - the national championship in cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field.
Most importantly, Kraft wants to continue to build the track and field program into a national powerhouse that is a consistent threat year in and year out.
"The bulk of the team is back, and the bulk of the people will be back next year," Kraft said. "We will be able to sustain it and let people know that Arizona State is a major player for the long term."
Reach the reporter at: gina.mizell@asu.edu.
