Sara Slattery

Sara Slattery begins her 7th season as the GCU men’s and women’s cross country head coach in 2021 after a successful career as a NCAA and professional athlete.

Since her arrival at GCU, every distance school record has been broken in cross country and track. Every women's school record in a distance event, save for one, was broken in 2018 and only one men's distance record still stands from 2017. Then in 2021, the school record book was rewritten in every men's and women's outdoor distance event (800m -10,000m), except for one.

Slattery was a professional distance runner, competing in national and international competitions. In 2007, she was the Pan American Games champion in the 10,000 meters in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. She was an alternate for the U.S. team at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and has been a member of other U.S. national teams.

Slattery graduated from Colorado in 2003 with a degree in economics and earned a master's degree in secondary and adult education there in 2005. She was a four-time NCAA champion, 10-time Big 12 champion and a 10-time All-American as a student-athlete, setting three school records (indoor mile, indoor 3,000 meters and outdoor 5,000 meters). In 2016, Slattery was inducted into the Colorado Athletics Hall of Fame.

Slattery is from Phoenix, where she attended Mountain Pointe High School and was a 10-time state champion. She was also a member of the 1998 U.S. Junior National Cross Country Team and earned state Runner of the Year honors during her junior and senior years.