Normal U-High’s Anderson win 2026 Clutch Sports Media Girls Track and Field Coach of the Year

Normal U-High’s Randy Anderson is a mad scientist when it comes to track and field.

The veteran coach owns the Illinois Top Times Speed Lab in Bloomington, which houses a menagerie of the newest equipment, statistics and resources to help each athlete reach their full potential. Through over three decades of coaching, he’s constantly finding new approaches, moving on from old ones and figuring out what works best in the current day and age.

It’s all working, as Anderson won Clutch Sports Media’s Girls Track and Field Coach of the Year by leading Normal U-High to a standout season while making the move from Class 2A to Class 3A. After winning the Class 2A state championship in 2025, the Pioneers finished third in Class 3A in 2026 and are believed to be the first IHSA girls track and field team to win a state trophy the same year that they were bumped up to a higher classification. 

Anderson oversaw a Normal U-High squad that won several meets, including the Central State Eight Conference Meet, Bloomington/Normal Intercity Meet and Bloomington Lady Raider Track and Field Invitational. The Pioneers faced some of the top competition in the state all year long and finished second at the Class 3A O’Fallon Sectional behind state champion Edwardsville.

Anderson and his staff also aided the growth of many Pioneers athletes across various types of events that were among the best in the entire Central Illinois area. Normal U-High had many state finals places, including Caty Minton (pole vault), Abigail Jackson (400 meters) and its 4x400 that all placed second at state, Hannah Safranek, who finished fifth in the 100 hurdles, seventh in the 100 meters and anchored the Pioneers’ 4x100 to a fifth-place showing, and throwers Isabella Thurston (fourth in shot put, seventh in discus) and MacKenzie Matejka (sixth in discus).

Eight Pioneers athletes were named to Clutch Sports Media’s 2026 Clutch Sports Media Girls Track and Field All-Area Team. Additionally, Normal U-High set a total of 18 records, including school records in the 4x100, 4x400, 400, 100, 100 hurdles and discus.

Hear more about Anderson’s season and his career in our interview with him below. Some answers have been minimally edited for clarity.

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

“The award, I look at it as more as the coaches and team of the year,because, really, without a great team and a great coaching staff, you can't get anything done,” Anderson said. “I have people on my coaching staff [Coach Andrews, Coach Martin, Coach Beyer and Coach Gates] right now that if it wasn't for them, the team wouldn't get anything done, because I would run out of gas."

“First of all, most teams are going to get bumped up into 3A, it usually is a pretty big shock factor,” Anderson added. “When I look back, we competed against 3A teams all season long the year before when we were in 2A. I mean, we would travel to Edwardsville, we traveled to [Troy] Triad, we'd be going everywhere there was a 3A team because I felt that that's what these ladies needed to keep moving the bar and get the confidence. The greatest gift you can give to a female athlete is confidence. When they get confidence, there's magical things that happen.”

“We knew we had some type of chance to compete. We didn't know exactly, but we knew that we were to have an opportunity to be in the top 10 in 2026…The bottom line is that throughout the season, we knew we had possibilities, we just had to focus on getting healthy and we just followed that until we got the sectionals, where we placed the same as state because our sectional was so deep.”

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

“Many people don't know this, but four of our top performers were injured about 85 percent of the whole season…so we had to really baby everything to get this team to state,” Anderson said. “One of our great discus throwers was hurt. We had three sprinters that were hurt. As a matter of fact, our 4x400, we ran a completely different group at sectionals and state, because of injury situations. Not very many people know, but the 4x100, the very first time that group ran was at state. We had an incredible freshman that helped us get to state and we had a girl that has been in that relay for three years, so she was ready to rock and roll. But we had to [deal with] a hamstring injury, so we did not know if they'd run around the track and I didn't know if they'd even make it. They ran a 46.85 which, in the Bloomington area, is the fastest time ever on any team ever run a 4x100 and that same group will be back next year.”

“The girls kept surprising me and they kept going faster and faster,” Anderson said. “Hannah [Safanek], our sprinter, she was a 12.7 [in the 100 meters] as a freshman and now she runs an 11.7, not a lot of kids improve that much. Abigail Jackson improved over two seconds in the 400 and she was injured. I've been coaching since 1989 and this is the most talented group I've been around and it's the group that's responded the best I've seen. Technology is going crazy with how to make people jump further and make people run faster and even how you do distance, the technology is out there so if you want to put the time and effort, do the research. It's out there available to help these athletes to be the best they can be.”

What’s your coaching background?

“It’s an interesting journey, I ran high school track in the small town of Lexington, Illinois and ran on a cinder track, I was a sprinter,” Anderson said. “I opened the business, got married but once my kids started getting older, my daughters all of a sudden, they started running. When they started running, I started watching the process and seeing what the coaches are doing and I don't know what the right word is, if I'm a workaholic, I don't know if I'm a tech guy or what I am,, but I dive into something that I love and I started diving into it [while my daughters were] in junior high and I learned a lot. I learned real quickly that if you volunteer for free, they'll let you do a lot of work. That's how I got into coaching junior high. The first year, we won state in the 4x200 in Clinton and that was the 3A level, the highest level back then. I got kind of hooked so I coached in Clinton for about 20 years as an assistant coach, then ended up being a head coach. During this time, I ran a Ford dealership and at that moment in my life and my career, the dealership was at a point that I could take time and coach.”

“Both my kids went through Clinton, and my youngest daughter went to [Illinois] Wesleyan, and I said, ‘Well, I can't miss her running so I'm going to step aside from Clinton’ and the [Illinois Wesleyan] coach Chris Schumacher reached out and asked me if I would like to coach some of the kids and sprints at Wesleyan,” Anderson added. “I went there and coached there for five years as an assistant volunteer and coached and that's probably when I got a little bit on steroid kick, but not real steroids. We started looking at higher tech information, started going to more clinics, we started having our own clinics. At that moment, there were some changes going on at Wesleyan, so I stepped aside and U-High was available and I decided, ‘Okay, I'll go back and try to coach high school that goes and see how it works’. So at U-High, our first year, we ended up getting fourth in state the first year I coached and that was a super young team.”

What helps keep you motivated?

“I love the science and how if you do the right things at the right time the right way, you can see results,” Anderson said. “We have a highly simple philosophy: focus on quality, not quantity. No matter what it is, no matter what we do, focus on quality, not quantity. My practices are as short as anybody's on the planet. We do the least amount we can do and I love seeing that because the kids have fun, they're not worn out, they can get home and get studying.”

“I love coaching, the biggest problem for me right now is my age getting to a point that what I want to get done every day, sometimes I can't because I run out of gas,” Anderson said. “But in the same way, I've been working on what we're going to do next starting the day we walked off the track at state. Next year, I think our team's got, if we stay healthy, it's going to be a stronger team than what it was this year, we stay healthy. There's so much science, there's so much technology out there you can get involved with in deep learning, and finding out what does work and what does not work and that's what I love to do.”

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

“I love to see people erase what they thought they couldn't do or accomplish something incredible,” Anderson said. “It gives me goosebumps to watch certain people run, no matter if it's a great 4x800, 4x100, whatever it could be. Those moments are always super exciting for me, but it's all so exciting. It’s also exciting to see the underclassmen come in and make a difference on the team. We had a couple kids this year that if they did not do the job they needed to, our team would have not got to state. [Those underclassmen] didn't compete at state, but they got us to state.”

“My most favorite accomplishment is at U-High, our kids come from all different junior highs so that means they all ran against each other throughout their careers,” Anderson said. “When you run against each other, you're not usually the best friends so my favorite thing this year is this year, I had the largest team-bonding that I think I've ever seen at U-High. I've seen the kids come together and support each other and step up and do things to help each other, even if it had nothing to do with them. They were going to do everything they can to help the team get those points or do whatever, so if you look at that, that's incredible.

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

“Be a student of the sport and invest in your time to continually learn what's the best, then follow through by testing that,” Anderson said. “Don't be so set on your ways, like I would say 20 percent of my stuff that I do every year is thrown away and 20 percent comes in new. I don't throw everything away, but I throw a lot away because I find out that this is not just not what's happening now and we do things a lot different. You got to be brave to do things differently than other people, but my own thing is to be a student of it. Vince Anderson used to tell me that you're not going to one to five clinics a year as a track coach, that’s not good coaching because you're not learning and you need to be adapting and changing so the athletes can be the best they can be. Then in the same way, sharing information with each other. We would not have seen the success we've had without so many coaches sharing so much information. That list would be tremendous if I went through them all.”