Q&A with Coach Eric Houle ('81)

This past fall, the Thunderbird Men's Cross Country Team won the 2015 Big Sky Championship at Cedar Ridge Golf Course. Head Coach Eric Houle was voted Big Sky Coach of the Year by his colleagues, an honor he has won 34 times in cross country and track & field in different conferences during his 23-year tenure at SUU. In this short Q&A, Coach Houle reflects on his career and what the Big Sky win means to the cross country program.

Q: Why did you decide to come back to SUU to coach?

"I spent ten years at high school coaching and I just badly wanted to get to the collegiate level. So when the job opened up I thought, ‘Wow. I can go back and coach Southern Utah? That would be crazy good.’ I remember that for five years, and even more, just walking on campus with this giggly feeling and thinking, ‘I’m the coach here.’ It was something I wanted to do and it’s not something I thought was going to materialize, but it obviously did. I seized that opportunity and the rest is history."

Q: What does the Big Sky Championship mean for SUU?

"It means we are a player and that we can compete no matter what the level is. We are rising as a university and we are showing in each one of those arenas, we can compete. In this arena, we can compete. In the academic arena, we can compete. In the theatre arts arena, we can compete. It is a testimony to the right decisions made early on that are affecting the present and the future. 

Q: What does the championship mean to the cross country team?

"We’ve won conference championships in each conference we’ve been in except for the Big Sky and we’ve been in Big Sky for three years. To go up against a team like Northern Arizona who out of the last 20 years has won 17 conference championships - to break that wall down and say “yes, you can achieve things” was really important for me to get across to our athletes.

 Q: Is the success of cross country any indication of how well track and field will compete in the spring?

"We are working with the distance runners right now, but we have signed some of the top sprinters in the country that will come on board. I think with the throws, the jumps, the sprints, and the distance coming together to start the indoor season and the success of the cross country team, I think we should be able to be very competitive in track.