North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: These Days, Geiger Only Delivers Titles
10/31/2008 12:00:00 AM | Cross Country
BY TIM PEELER
So for several years, Geiger schlepped to the post office every morning, sorted out all the mail, and hand-delivered everything to coaches’ offices at the
It certainly wasn’t easy work, especially in the spring of 1983. That was just after Jim Valvano and the Cardiac Pack won their unlikely NCAA championship on Lorenzo Charles last-second dunk against top-ranked
For months, Geiger lugged dozens of bags of mail to Valvano’s office at
“I can promise you, every day after I left the post office, I felt like Santa Claus, loaded down with all those bags full of congratulation letters,” Geiger said.
But his mailroom stint paid the bills and gave him some different world experience.
“I didn’t really mind,” Geiger said. “They were paying me about $3,000 to coach and about $10,000 to run the mailroom. And I figured if this coaching thing didn’t work out, I could always go get a job as a postman.”
Geiger has always been looking for a contingency, something to fall back on if his chosen path didn’t work out. He worked his way through college selling pots and pans. He was working on a real-estate license in
Still, he was lured to NC State by the late Jones for little more than $3,000 and an athletic meal card.
Over the last three decades, however, the coaching thing has worked out rather well for Geiger, who leads the men’s cross country team into the 2008 ACC Championships in Chapel Hill Saturday at 11 a.m. He has coached as many as six Wolfpack varsity sports: men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s indoor track and field and men’s and women’s outdoor track and field. In 2006, he turned the women’s cross country program over to longtime assistant Laurie Henes, a former NCAA champion under Geiger.
The success of his programs serves as decoration for the hallway outside his office in the
He has won more ACC championships than any coach in any sport in the league’s 55-year history, with a combined 38 conference team titles between the cross country and track-and-field programs. Remarkably, that’s more than half of the 70 team titles the school has won in all sports since Geiger’s arrival as Jones’ assistant in 1978.
For good reason, Geiger has won 31 ACC Coach of the Year awards in his 27 seasons as a head coach.
The numbers, after a while, become overwhelming. He’s coached eight individual national champions, one relay national champion and the winner of the first Olympic women’s marathon, Joan Benoit.
But this might be the true mark of Geiger’s success: His athletes are probably more proficient in the classroom than they are on the track or the cross country course. NC State has had 30 winners of the NCAA post-graduate scholarship awards, and Geiger has coached 16 of them. While the NCAA can’t say for sure, that’s certainly among the top five in the nation for any coach.
“When you look at what he's done here, not just in terms of winning championships, but finding high-quality student-athletes, it’s just staggering,” said NC State athletics director Lee Fowler.
Geiger, even with his crusty faade, always makes sure he redirects attention to his athletes and not himself.
“I have been very fortunate to be part of a group of young people who have achieved some success but I'm just a part of it,” Geiger said. “I've never considered coaching to be just about the championships and the honors. It’s about the success your team has on the track and in the classroom while they are here, but also what they do after they leave here.” For his former athletes, that’s classic Geiger: giving credit to them instead of accepting it for himself. He never joins his championship teams on the podium when they accept their awards. He always stands off to the side to let them relish the victory with their teammates. “He has always said it is for us,” said Patrick Joyce, a former All-America cross country runner for the Wolfpack who is now Reebok’s U.S. director of marketing for running. “He never wants to be in the spotlight himself. He goes about his business, and his business is to win championships.” The men’s team he takes to Still, he has not lowered his expectations for this year’s team, relying on sixth-year senior Bobby Mack, senior Gavin Coombs, senior Fredy Torres and junior John Martinez to lead a lineup that has added three redshirt freshmen and a true freshman. “I've told these guys from Day 1, we plan to be successful this year, and that includes the goal we have each and every year of trying to win the ACC championship,” Geiger said. “But it will be a challenge. “One thing that I think is important to the success of this program: We're not looking two years down the road and trying to develop these athletes. These athletes in the program want to win today. If you keep looking for success tomorrow, it's not going to happen. I like the attitude of the program. The goal for me is to have the kids have an opportunity to be successful on Saturday.” And, if history is any indicator, they will have that chance. Even if they don’t, however, Geiger isn’t about to go looking for a job as a mailman. You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
