NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt cross country and track and field director Althea Thomas announced the hiring of Chad Balyo and Lisa Morgan as assistant coaches for the cross country and distance programs Wednesday.
“I’m excited to have both Coach Balyo and Coach Morgan join our program,” Thomas said. “They both bring a level of experience in cultivating and fostering success while developing young men and women that will prove to be most impactful for our program. They are both amazing people and will help our program continue to reach new heights.”
Balyo comes to Nashville by way of Homewood, Alabama, where he served as the head cross country and assistant track and field coach at Samford since 2018. He got his start in coaching at Furman, where he was an assistant coach from 2013 to 2018.
In his more than 10 years of coaching, he has tutored student-athletes to 17 All-America honors and two NCAA runner-up finishes, Allie Buchalski in the outdoor 5,000 meters in 2018 and Karisa Nelson in the indoor mile in 2019. With Balyo’s guidance, Nelson placed eighth in the 1,500 meters at the 2019 USA Championships, clocking what was the ninth-fastest mark on the USTFCCCA’s NCAA all-time performers list.
While coaching at Furman, Balyo coached the women to a seventh place finish at the NCAA DI Cross Country Championships in 2017 and the men to a 13th-place finish in 2015. His coaching efforts contributed to the Paladins earning 10 Southern Conference cross country titles. At Samford, he helped the Bulldogs achieve 20 SoContrack and field team titles.
Morgan brings over 20 years of coaching experience to the Commodore distance squad and was named a track and field coach for Team USA on six occasions. Morgan began her coaching career at Seton Hall where she tutored Flirtisha Harris, the 1994 indoor and outdoor NCAA 400 meters champion. That year, she also guided the indoor and outdoor women’s 4×400-meter relay squads to NCAA championships. While with the Pirates, she coached two-time Olympian Kenia Sinclair, a Jamaican national champion and 800 meters national record holder.
As the head coach at Columbia High School, she guided Olivia Baker who recorded a time of 52.4 seconds in the 400 meters and split 2:02 in the 800 meters at Penn Relays.
Most recently, she worked with the cross country and track and field programs at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Before her stint in Newark, she was the head men’s and women’s cross country and assistant track and field coach at TCU from 2020 to 2022 where she coached student-athletes to scoring performances in each Big 12 Championship during her tenure there.
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