Darrell Price never dreamed he would be coaching cross-country at Lubbock Christian, but his willingness to take a step in faith helped guide the program not only to a dynasty of national championships, but also to one of spiritual transformation and character.
Price had lived in Lubbock helping coach basketball at LCU for seven years after
graduating from the school in 1969, when it was still a junior college. The Seminole native lettered in basketball for two years under coach Larry Rogers, before moving on to get his bachelor's degree from Harding University. He worked his way up to head coach of the Chaps in 1975 when he was just 26 years old, leading the program for three years with an 18-64 overall record (.220). Then, after nearly a decade of different jobs that led Price as far away as Houston, LCU athletic director and head basketball coach John Copeland gave Darrell a call, asking him to go in a new direction.
"They'd had a coaching change in the track and cross-country area - one in which I'd had no experience - but he had worked with me, we knew each other," Price shared. "I think he was more interested in finding someone who knew what LCU was all about. Coaching is coaching."
After prayer and deliberation, he decided to take the job.
Early on, Price had the help of a mentor from South Plains College.
"James Morris was a Christian guy, a lot older than me, who had been the head coach over ther for a long time. He helped me overcome a pretty great learning curve," he recalled. " Thankfully, you can become an expert in just about anything in a couple of years if you just apply yourself."
Coming to the sport with fresh eyes also helped Price develop his coaching style.
"I was able to form my own philosophy. I didn't have a lot of background in the sport, but that ended up being a positive. I'd seen a lot of ways of doing things, and I just took those and adapted it to what we needed for LCU."
When Price took over the program in the fall of 1988, there were two Kenyan runners already on the team - one was the son of Kip Keino, two-time Olympic gold medalist for distance running. The other, Peter Biwott, stared the semester late, Price recalled.
"He scheduled an appointment with me when he finally got here, and I had no idea what he would want to talk about. As it turned out, he asked me for spiritual encouragement, sitting right across from me."
Price was genuinely surprised.
"It was amazing - that was the beginning of a story that I could have never made up or dreamed of the part that I'd play. There was so much of God's providence in that year."
After some weeks of Bible study, Price baptized Peter, and they shared a close relationship from there on out.
Peter was from the Kalenjin tribe in Kenya, famous for producing many elite runners - a fact that was completely unknown to Price at that time. Through the first two years that he coached, his teams performed well, winning District VIII Championships in 1988 and 1989,, placing 16th and 11th at the NAIA National Championships in those years. Price was also named the Cross-Country Coach of the Year in the district both of those years, even though they were no where as great as what was to come.
Price with Peter Biwott in 1989.
In his third, year, Peter brought his coach to Albuquerque to meet some influential individuals from his home country.
"It turned out that some of them had run for Division I schools like Washington State, and Peter wanted to help bring some athletes to our program. I was in a room that, if you were from that running sub-culture, either in the states or worldwide, you probably would have been in awe of who was there and what they had accomplished."
Price shared that there was a young man there who was a brother to Ibrahim Hussein, who had won the Boston Marathon three times in 1988, 1991 and 1992, who was running at South Plains College, just down the road from LCU. Mbarak Hussein was being recruited by many high-ranking Division I running programs, but Ibrahim was in that room with Price in Albuquerque, and after talking to Peter about the atmosphere and environment at LCU, decided that his brother needed to continue his education there.
"It was simply because of the environment. He (Ibrahim) had been to New Mexico State, which is a good school, but in those programs, the coaches didn't have much of a relationship with their kids. It simply wasn't as important as winning. Nobody believed that Hussein would come over here," Price added, "but he did - in that third year he showed up."
During that same summer, Peter decided to bring Price to Kenya, as well - but this trip had nothing to do with running. Peter wanted to preach in Kenya, so Price took him to a preaching school.
"I never went to Kenya to recruit," he said. "I had a file full of names, but many of the athletes there couldn't do the academic work. They were talented, but they were desperate to go out and get to the States. I needed to have a person with character, who was also a good student and a good athlete. If you took one of those out, it wouldn't be what was best for them or for the program."
To Price's surprise, when he and Peter arrived in the parking lot of the preaching school in Nairobi, he was met by five families, all a part of a mission team, who had heard that he was coming with an LCU graduate.
"I didn't even know anyone would know that I was there, and they had driven over mountain ranges to find me."
The mission team told him that they wanted to start a Christian boarding school there int eh middle part of Kenya that Peter was from, and they needed someone with an education to be the headmaster.
"It was absolutely providential," Price said. "Peter became the headmaster there for the next five or six years."
While Price was in the country, those families introduced him to a young man who wanted to run at LCU named James Bungei, whom they believed would be a good fit at LCU. Price heeded their recommendation and that fall Bungei joined Mbarak Hussein and Derek Kite - a runner from California who had been one of the top high school distance runners in the country - as the new additions to the team, alongside program veterans David Kogo and Paul Rotich, setting the program up for the 1990-91 school year.
"I didn't know how good they were going to be," Price recalled, "but we didn't lose a race that year."
That team traveled all over the country, including a victorious meet at the University of Arkansas, the team that would go on to win the Division I National Championship. The won every meet on the way to the NAIA National Championship in which they defeated seven-time defending champions Adams State as an unranked team. The experience was made even more exceptional when James Bungei won the individual championship - the first of four consecutive that he would achieve during his time at LCU.
The 1990 title sparked a run of eight consecutive years (1990-1997) that the Chaps won the
NAIA Cross-Country National Championship, including Bungei's four individual titles, followed by two more by runner Simeon Sawe. Competing almost exclusively in the distance events, Lubbock Christian also claimed a pair of NAIA Indoor Track & Field National Championships (1991, 1994) and an NAIA Outdoor Track & Field National Championship in 1996. Hussein and Bungei both graduated as Academic All-Americans, Price noted proudly.
LCU also claimed Sooner Athletic Conference Championships from 1994 to 1997. Price was named the NAIA Coach of the Year in 1991, '92 and '93 before finally being inducted into the NAIA Cross-Country Hall of Fame in 2001. During his time at the helm of the program, Price coached 58 All-Americans in cross-country alone and another 135 across both indoor and outdoor track and field.
Even more important than the titles, as far as Price is concerned, were the spiritual successes that the program saw.
"I baptized 17 runners over those years," he recalled.
Some were Kenyan, some were American, but Price reflected humbly on the impact that he had on those lives.
"I think a lot of changes were taking place in me, as far as seeing what Christ wanted me to do through my life... It's really all about relationships, talking about what matters.
It takes a lot of pressure off," Price explained, "when winning isn't part of your identity. When you know who you are, what your purpose is and you see things in a more eternal perspective - you can enjoy whatever you're a part of. You can be blessed by those things, instead of serving them."
Dr. Willie Sang, a longtime friend of LCU and high-ranking medical professional in Kenya, ran cross-country and track at LCU under coach Hugh Rhodes prior to Price's tenure, but ended up forging a strong friendship with Price, helping connect him with continuing work in Kenya throughout his life.
"LCU's environment was really powerful for that," Price added. "We had a lot of people on campus, who, as they do for any student, took an interest in their lives, especially in their spiritual lives."
He is still good friends with many of those runners - a testament to the powerful relationship they share that goes far beyond running and the titles - rooted in what truly matters.
Price was inducted into the LCU Athletics Hall of Honor in 2000.
