Eureka’s Morris wins 2025 CSM Boys Cross Country Coach of the Year

Eureka’s Olivia Morris has stepped on the top of the IHSA State Finals podium more than once. 

The former Olivia Klaus did it first as a runner for Eureka in 2007, becoming the first Class 1A girls state champion after the IHSA moved to the three-class system. 18 years later, she’s a state champion again, this time as the head coach of her alma mater. 

Morris is Clutch Sports Media’s 2025 Boys Cross Country Coach of the Year thanks to leading Eureka to its sixth state title and first since 2003. The Hornets put up 151 points with five runners in the top 41 to beat out Elmwood and Rockford Christian. 

Under Morris’ leadership, the Hornets have experienced an uptick in each of the last few seasons, finishing seventh at state in 2022 before jumping up to fifth in 2023 and third in 2024. On top of winning state, Eureka also won the Class 1A Farmington Regional, the Heart of Illinois Conference Meet, Elmwood Invitational, the Dunlap Invitational, and the Class 1A race at Peoria High’s First to the Finish Invitational. 

Eureka’s girls team also flourished under Morris as it won a regional championship, finished seventh at the Class 1A State Finals and had four runners selected to CSM’s Girls Cross Country All-Area team. Eureka’s boys team featured several CSM All-Area selections, including first-teamer Gavin Stalter and honorable mentions Davin Dingledine, Timothy Rogers and Landon Wurmnest. 

Morris, who coached alongside retiring assistant Brett Charlton, took over Eureka’s boys cross country team in 2017 after a decorated running career. She ran at Eastern Illinois University and earned four All-Ohio Valley Conference honors, led the Panthers to winning a conference championship and was inducted into EIU’s athletic hall of fame in 2020. She currently teaches math at Eureka. 

Hear more from Morris about this past season and her career in our interview with her below. Some responses have been minimally edited for clarity.

What have you been able to reflect on in the days since the season has ended? 

“It's been nice to kind of sit back and just kind of enjoy the moment. During the season, there's a lot of different pressures and stresses that are there that it's hard to really pause and reflect and enjoy it. We had our banquet Tuesday after state, and that was really fun to sit down and really put thoughts together and numbers together. It's just kind of been like just sitting back looking at all the boys have accomplished, it's kind of been neat to see it all come together. There were four seniors that ran and three of them were four-year seniors. The boys maybe got seventh their freshman year and none of the freshmen ran on it, but they were alternates. Then they got fifth, and then third, and then first. So it's just kind of cool to see them be a part of the fifth-place team, be a part of that third place team, and then the championship.

In your mind, what made the team so special this year?

“It was really a mixture of the leadership, and obviously the seniors were part of that, but we had a really special junior that was pretty big on that. He always led our team goals and our different meetings like that. I feel like it was the leadership that kind of fueled the team culture. I mean, they were really one team in all aspects of it. They had 54 kids on their team, but only seven got to run. We asked them to do hard things pretty much every day and they choose to do it, but they do it together and that's the really cool part. 

“We do long runs, which are pretty tough runs, and the boys started this thing of every mile [they run], they do fist bumps. They hold each other accountable, they’re selfless, they really celebrate each other. They know when somebody had a big race and they make sure that they let them know that so that was pretty fun to see kind of develop too throughout the season.”

What’s your coaching background? 

“I’ve been the head coach at Eureka for nine years but this is my 11th year as a coach. I coached track, which was actually the first sport I coached at Eureka. I coached it for the girls for two years, and then one of those years overlapped with cross country and I did cross [country] and track at the same time. It was a bit much so I gave up track and just focused on cross country and we just finished up season nine.”

What helps keep you going?

“I thought that after I would have kids, that it would start kind of going in the direction where I would maybe start giving it up or maybe shifting to an assistant or a volunteer. I've kind of had those thoughts of when is it time to focus on one thing over the other? And there's the hard parts, obviously, but a lot of times, I've seen my kids interact with the program and my husband will bring my kids to practice, and they'll come to meets. The relationships that form with the athletes I feel like at this point is so much more important than to focus on that than me. The absence of me, my husband, steps up in a pretty big way to where the kids are. The kids are getting their fill of family time and they get to see the cross country kids. I have a six year-old, a four year-old and a one year-old and they've been through the program since they were born, which has been neat to see.”

“I’ve had thoughts like ‘What if I stepped away?’ but then my kids don't get to see these athletes who just show up do hard things, they do it together and they do it with a smile on their face. Right now, I don't have to balance their schedules [so] it's really just my husband and my schedule right now for the most part and I don't know how that'll look in a couple years, when maybe [my son] is in sports.

“I do reflect on it at the end of the season, and I have found as I've gotten more and more years under my belt, it's starting to become a part of me to where you kind of get the edge of ‘Okay, what can we do better next year?’ We’re already talking about next year so it pushes away the thought of going away from the sport. The more you make relationships with the kids, the more you just buy into it, it won't be work and the more I buy into it and make my family a part of it, it won’t be work.”

Aside from winning, what’s a fun memory with your players that you’ve had from this past season? 

“We do team dinners on Friday nights and kids will play, depending on where we're at, board games, or there's one specific place where they have an indoor volleyball area. Interacting with kids to see how competitive they get in the game of Scattergories or volleyball, I feel like that part sticks it out to me a lot.”

“More specific, there was a run where the boys came back and one of our top runners, Landon Wurmnest, had gotten stung by a bee on his tongue, and his tongue was swollen up. His thing that he told me [and he had] a lisp while he was telling me because he couldn't talk right, was ‘I’m fine, I’m okay, I wasn't going to cut my run short’ or something like that.”

What’s a piece of coaching advice you’d give or one that’s been helpful for you?

“For me, I feel like just focusing on the things that you can control. As a coach, sometimes we get so caught up in the things that we can't control and I feel like the biggest thing is the things you tell your athletes, turn around and tell it to yourself. Because we do say that to the athletes all the time that we can't control it. That's what we focus on. Sometimes I put a lot of pressure on was this the right workout? Was this the right week set up? We tell the athletes [to] trust your training, trust your fitness. So like in the same direction, trust that what you're doing is the right thing. Because the biggest thing is you just got to instill confidence in the kids. Every coach is going to have their kid trained for three miles, and it's just portraying that confidence. I feel like just what you coach the kids like, what you tell the kids, make sure you're telling yourself that too because sometimes you need to hear it just as much as they need to hear it.”