Cougar Athletics
30 NAIA National Championships
95 GSAC Championships
...and counting

preston@apu.edu

Preston Grey is in his third season as the director of the Azusa Pacific men's and women's distance programs and his fourth year with Azusa Pacific.

Grey has continued to build upon the work of his predecessors, Bill Reeves and Irv Ray, taking Azusa Pacific to new heights in program history. In 2006, he guided the Cougar men to their finest showing ever at the NAIA cross country championships, a third-place finish that was improvement upon their fifth-place showing the year before, Grey’s first at the Cougar helm.

The Azusa Pacific women have improved under Grey’s leadership, moving from an 18th-place finish in 2005 to ninth in 2006 and now a sixth-place finish at the 2007 championships.

This past fall, he became only the second coach in NAIA history to coach 2 NAIA cross country champions of the same season when Cougars’ Jaime Canterbury and Aron Rono respectively captured the NAIA women’s and men’s cross country titles.

Grey has already coached 4 NAIA cross country All-Americans (Whitney Jacobsmeyer, Jaime Canterbury, Jackie Kipwambok, Aron Rono), and in track & field he has led 16 different All-Americans, including NAIA champions Rono, Canterbury and school-record holder Tim Ramirez.

Grey came to Azusa Pacific in the summer of 2004 as a graduate assistant coach in the Cougar track & field and cross country program. He had just completed an outstanding 4-year distance running career at NAIA-member Cornerstone University of Grand Rapids, Mich. Grey was a 2-time qualifier for the NAIA cross country championship meet, earning All-American recognition during his 2003 senior season when he also clocked a school-record 24.48 8K. He was also a 2-time all-region and 3-time all-conference honoree.

In track & field, Grey was a 6-time qualifier for the NAIA championship meet and was a 2-time Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference honoree. He posted career bests of 31:22 (10,000 meters), 14:51 (5000 meters) and 8:46 (3000 meters).

Grey, a native of Champaign, Ill., graduated from Cornerstone in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in business/sports management. This past December, he completed a master's degree in education at Azusa Pacific.