Steve Spence, an Olympic marathoner, World Championships marathon bronze medalist and 13-time PSAC Coach of the Year, enters his 14th season as the head coach of the men’s and women’s cross country teams at Shippensburg University in 2011. He also serves as an assistant coach with SU’s track and field teams but devotes his time to the sport at which he excelled – distance running.
At Shippensburg, Spence has tutored 63 All-Americans in track and 12 All-Americans in cross country. Among the distinguished distance runners he has mentored are Randy Lowe, who won the 10K outdoor national championship in 1992, Emily Budnyk, the national runner-up at the 10K outdoor national championship in 1999, Mary Dell, the national runner-up in the 3K steeplechase in 2010, and daughter Neely Spence, a four-time national champion in the 5K. Spence has also coached three national championship indoor distance medley relay squads, winning both the men’s and women’s titles last season.
Spence has earned six PSAC Coach of the Year awards for cross country – including three-in-a-row on the women’s side and two-in-a-row on the men’s side. He is also a four-time USTFCCCA Atlantic Region Coach of the Year, including three consecutive on the women’s side.
A 1985 graduate of Shippensburg with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, Spence made a name for himself as a member of the cross country and track and field teams, where he was a seven-time NCAA Division II All-American. He spent
10 years as a volunteer coach at the university while he was running competitively and was one of the top American road racers.
Prior to the 1997 spring season, Spence was promoted to full-time assistant before officially being named as the head coach of both cross country and track and field on Oct. 15, 1997, succeeding Robert Walker.
In his eight seasons as the head coach of both programs, Spence was named Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) Coach of the Year six times (MXC – ‘01, MITF – ’03, ’05, MOTF – ’03, ’04, WOTF – ’05). He was also named the NCAA Division II East Regional Men’s Track and Field Coach of the Year honors from 2003-05.
Under Spence’s tutelage, Shippensburg won three PSAC championships in men’s outdoor track and field and one during indoor track and field along. SU also won the PSAC and NCAA Division II East Region championships for women’s cross country in 1997. The programs also garnered 10 conference runner-up honors as well during this span: eight in track and field and two in cross country.
In 2005, Spence became the first men’s track and field coach in conference history to win both the indoor and outdoor championships in the same season, a feat duplicated by his successor, Dave Osanitsch, in 2009.
The 2008 women’s cross country team brought Shippensburg back to prominence. After finishing 12th at the PSAC Tournament in 2006, Spence hit the recruiting trail hard and saw the fruits of his labor rewarded with SU’s third PSAC championship and NCAA Regional title in school history in addition to a sixth-place finish at the NCAA Championships. The women’s squad repeated as conference and regional champions in 2009.
Also in 2009, the men’s cross country program won its first NCAA Atlantic Region Championship in program history. The Raider harriers placed all five of their scoring performers among the Top 13 finishers to bestow each gentleman with USTFCCCA All-Region honors. At the 2009 PSAC Championships from Edinboro, Shippensburg was the only school to have six runners among the Top 20 and nine runners among the Top 30.
The memories of the 2010 season will never be forgotten. Spence guided a women’s squad that finished fourth at the national championships, including an individual national championship for Neely Spence and All-America honors for Mary Dell and Katie Spratford. He also guided the Raiders to their third consecutive conference and regional championship crowns – recording a 79-point victory at the PSAC meet and an 86-point victory at the regional meet.
At the PSAC Championships, SU had nine of its 10 runners achieve All-PSAC honors with a Top 20 finish. SU's pack was so impressive at the meet, that if the No. 6 through No. 10 runners had competed as a separate team, that group would have finished second at the meet ahead of all the other PSAC schools.
On the men’s side, Spence instructed a group that won its first conference championship in school history by placing four runners among the Top 5 and had all 10 of its runners finish in the Top 30. If SU's top five scorers lined up in a dual meet competition against all of the other finishers from the PSAC, the Raiders still would have won the conference championship.
A second-place finish at the Atlantic Region Championships put Shippensburg’s men in the national meet for the second straight year. At nationals, the Raider harriers finished seventh as a team – improving six spots from 2009.
Spence is a Central Pennsylvania native from Elizabethtown. He came to Shippensburg University after graduating from Lower Dauphin High School in Hummelstown. As a student-athlete, he earned All-American honors in the 5,000 meters four years in a row in outdoor track and one year in indoor track while also receiving All-America honors twice in cross country.
Spence was PSAC champion in the 1,500 meters in 1982 and 1984, the 5,000 meters in 1982 and 1985 and the 10,000 meters in 1985. Two of his All-America honors in the 5,000 meters, outdoor in 1984 and indoor in 1985, were NCAA Division II national championships. In 1982 and 1985, Spence was voted the PSAC’s Outstanding Track Athlete. Spence still holds four school records in the 3,000 and 5,000 meters as well as the 1-mile and 2-mile runs while holding the outdoor record in the 5,000 meters.
At Lower Dauphin, Spence won the 1980 Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Athletic Association (PIAA) Class AAA 1,600-meter championship in a then-state record time of 4:12. He also won the 1980 PIAA championship in the mile run with a state-record time and was also the 1980 PIAA District 3 championship and record holder for both the 1-mile and 2-mile runs.
Following his graduation from Shippensburg in 1985, Spence pursued a career as a distance runner where he began by making his mark on the international scene. He made his first top-10 listing in the Runner’s World Road Race rankings in 1988 when he finished third at the end of the season behind Road Runners Club of America (RRCA) Hall of Fame members Mark Curp and Jon Sinclair.
For the next four years, Runner’s World ranked Spence first in 1989 and 1990, second in 1991 and third in 1992. He won the 1990 Columbus Marathon in his personal record of 2:12.17, qualifying him for the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, Japan. The third-place finish was the first distance medal for the United States in international competition since Frank Shorter in 1976.
Earlier in 1991, Spence captured the Olympic Development 10,000 meters at the Penn Relays and in 1992, he won the Olympic
Trials Marathon and was a member of the 1992 Olympic team.
At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, he finished 12th in the men’s marathon despite battling the flu, marking yet again, the best US Olympic marathon finish place since Shorter’s 1976 run.
Between college and 1993, Spence was a member of four international teams, including the 1991 World Championships, 1992 Olympics, 1989 NYC Ekiden Relay and 1991 Berlin, Germnay Ekiden Relay.
From 1989-91, Spence was the recipient of USATF’s Robert DeCelle Award, annually given to the Outstanding Long Distance Runner in the United States. He received the USATF’s Glenn Cunningham Award in 1991 as the Outstanding Runner in the US, 800 meters and up and was the Road Racing Club of America’s Road Runner of the Year from 1989-92.
At the end of 1997, Spence officially retired. His contributions to the sport of distance running have been numerous and many consider him to be one of the runners responsible for the re-emergence of distance running in the United States.
Since turning 40, Spence is still competitive and has recorded some outstanding masters performances despite his coaching duties preventing extensive travel for masters competition. In 2003, he set the American Master’s national record for five miles with a time of 23:47, breaking the 1988 record held by Bill Rodgers.
In September, 2004, at the Jefferson Hospital Philadelphia Distance Run, he won the masters division in 1:06.21, beating Andrew Masai and Abraham Limo, two top-ranked masters from Kenya, by more than 30 seconds. Spence also has an American masters record for 10,000 meters on the track, with a time of 30:18.16.
In 2003, Spence was inducted into the NCAA Division II Coaches Association Cross Country Hall of Fame and in the spring of 2005, was voted into the RRCA Hall of Fame along with Keith Brantly.
Spence is committed to creating individualized training programs in order to help each student-athlete reach their goals and achieve their potential.
He and his wife Kirsten have three daughters: Neely, Reynah and Margeaux, and one son, Eli. Neely is entering her senior year at Shippensburg as a six-time Division II national champion between track and cross country. The family lives in Shippensburg.
