After bringing in a national title during his four-season run as head coach of Pomona-Pitzer men’s cross country and track & field, Jordan Carpenter is moving on to a Division I post at Boston University.
Carpenter will serve as BU’s associate head coach of cross country and assistant coach of track & field, a news release said Wednesday.
“My time at Pomona-Pitzer has been incredible and I am so proud of everything we were able to accomplish during my tenure with the cross country/track & field programs,” Carpenter said in an email to TSL. “We saw success at every level and we had a ton of fun along the way.”
Carpenter arrived in Claremont in 2016 and took over for now-associate dean Tony Boston as head coach the following year, expanding on a snowballing effort that had seen Pomona-Pitzer make five consecutive national meets.
He led the Sagehens to two SCIAC championships, three NCAA West championships and finally the 2019 NCAA Division III cross country title – the second national win for the entire athletic department.
“[Coach Boston] showed us that we can win and that we can make it to the national stage … and then Coach Carpenter built on the program that Coach Boston built to bring us a national title,” NCAA All-American runner Daniel Rosen PO ’20 told TSL in 2019.
Running for the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh as recently as 2015, Carpenter’s footing has risen quickly. He was named the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association’s 2019 National Coach of the Year and has garnered similar accolades from SCIAC and NCAA West.
“3-5 years from now this will be the hire of 2021,” BU track and cross country director Gabe Sanders tweeted after the announcement.
Carpenter called the move bittersweet, but expressed confidence that P-P’s program will continue to grow, as well as excitement about moving into the D1 world.
“I am going to miss our staff of assistant coaches and our student-athletes tremendously,” he said. “It will be tough to watch the program from afar, but I am also so excited to see what is next for them both in athletics and in life. I know that I am leaving a program that is primed for sustained success at the highest level.”