Kelly Phillips
Women's Head Coach

Kelly Phillips enters her first season as the head women's cross country/track and field coach at Miami University, after serving as the assistant women's cross country/track and field coach at Purdue University. She coached middle and long-distance runners for the past four seasons at Purdue and has 10 years of experience coaching in collegiate athletics. During the course of her coaching career, Phillips has guided 36 student-athletes to the NCAA Championships in either cross country or track and field.

During her stint with the Boilermakers, Phillips saw the Purdue Varsity Cross Country Course 5K record broken and the second-fastest 6K time posted, while the women's cross country team earned USTFCCCA All-Academic Team honors each year she was there and took home Purdue's President's Cup, awarded to the team with the highest grade point average, two consecutive seasons.

Prior to Purdue, Phillips took a break from coaching and founded Claremont Trails Running Camp in Claremont, New Hampshire, which she helped grow from 12 campers to over 100 in just three years directing and establishing the camp.

Before stepping away from coaching to open Claremont Trails, Phillips worked at South Florida from 1997-2001. During her time in Tampa, she served as the men's and women's associate cross country/track and field coach, and later the head coach. While working for the Bulls, Phillips guided 33 student-athletes to the NCAA Championships and helped South Florida claim the women's cross country crown twice (1998, 1999), including the team's first-ever league title, and the men's cross country Conference USA title in 2000. She also made sure her teams were achieving in the classroom, as the women's cross country team earned Academic All-America honors from 1998-2000, while the men's team achieved the distinction in 2000. For her efforts, Phillips was named Conference USA Women's Cross Country Coach of the Year twice and Men's Coach of the Year once, as well as the league's Women's Track and Field Coach of the Year in her final season with the Bulls. From 1998-2000, she also was awarded the NCAA's South Region Cross Country Coach of the Year.

Phillips also served as the meet director for Conference USA's Cross Country Championships in 1998 and the league's Outdoor Track and Field Championships in 2001. In addition, she helped fundraise over $70,000 during her tenure to help support the South Florida cross country and track and field teams by organizing road races in the Tampa Bay area.

"(Former head coach) Rich Ceronie started the distance tradition at Miami, and while only here a short time Rita (Arndt-Molis) took the Miami program to a new level," Phillips said. "What an exciting time to be a RedHawk! My primary goal is to take the championship culture that has been created and bring it to an even higher level on the cross country team and the track & field team. Miami is a place that can consistently have a national caliber team, have graduates at the top of their class, and be a positive influence in the community. It will be my job to see that these things happen and I am very fortunate to have been given this opportunity."

Phillips got her start in coaching at her alma mater, Auburn University, as a graduate assistant coach from 1991-1993, working mainly with distance runners. As an athlete at Auburn, Phillips was a two-time All-American in the mile and 3000m and set 14 school records as a student-athlete. She earned her bachelor's degree in marketing from Auburn in 1991.

Phillips later went on to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 1500m in both 1992 and 1996. In 1995, she was also the Olympic Festival Champion in the 1500m and finished fifth at the Pan American Games in Argentina.

Phillips has a husband, Mike, and two sons, Michael and Connor.