Track and field and cross country Head Coach Corey Mistretta, right, worked under former head coach Sean Brady, left, for three years. When Brady made the decision to leave he suggested that Mistretta take his place. Courtesy of Sports Information
Sean Brady has ended his 17-year run with the Lions track and field and cross country team and has taken the opportunity to be the assistant coach for Texas A&M. Corey Mistretta was announced as the new head coach of track and field and cross country on July 24 by Athletic Director Jay Artigues.
Mistretta is grateful for the opportunity to be the head coach at his alma mater.
“I’m super excited,” said Mistretta. “It’s extremely humbling to be able to follow in the footsteps of a guy like Andy Thiel who is a hall of fame coach here at Southeastern and gave me my opportunity to be part of the program 33 years ago. It’s almost surreal that I am able to do what he did, and I admired him so much for what he was doing.”
Mistretta served three years as a recruiting coordinator, assistant coach and Associate Head Coach under Brady, and has a lot of respect for what he accomplished.
“To follow directly behind what Coach Brady has done here is unprecedented,” said Mistretta. “He has put the team on the map nationally. We have done some amazing things with the guys here at national and international level.”
After Brady took the job offer, one of the first things he did was talk to Artigues to ask him to name Mistretta as the new head coach of the team, and Artigues took his advice.
“He really believed that I was in a position to move forward,” said Mistretta. “Of course for human resources reasons, they did a search and accepted a whole bunch of applications. I’m thankful that Coach Artigues, through that process, felt I was the guy to lead the team.”
Mistretta hopes to continue the program along the path that it has been going on with athletes competing at national and international levels.
“One of the great things about Coach Brady was that he gave the assistant coaches a lot of autonomy,” said Mistretta. “He and I had a lot of conversations about the direction of the team and how we needed to change things up. We paired the team back a little bit and made it smaller so that we can bring in kids that can develop into national level competitors.”