LonnieGreene

Lonnie Greene has coached the University of Kentucky track and field and cross country programs to sustained success, including school-record points finishes and three NCAA individual champions. Greene enters his eighth season as the head coach in Lexington in 2025-26.

Since taking over as the head coach before the 2018-19 season, Greene has brought elite accomplishments and unparalleled character to the program. Wildcats have earned more than 150 All-America honors and dozens more All-Academic honors, to go along plenty of individual Southeastern Conference gold medals, more than a dozen NCAA individual medals and other elite performances. As a team, both the men’s and women’s track and field teams have entrenched themselves as elite teams at the NCAA and SEC Championships level.

During the 2025 seasons, Greene led 22 student-athletes to qualifying for the NCAA Outdoor Championships and nine to qualify for the indoor championships. Men’s sprinter Carlie Makarawu, after previously winning the men’s 200m indoor national championship, claimed his second NCAA title of 2025, posting a school 200m record time of 19.84. Makarawu joins a list of three student-athletes to win an individual NCAA title under Greene at Kentucky, including Keaton Daniel and Abby Steiner.

Greene also led the Wildcats’ men’s squad to the program’s highest-ever finish at the outdoor championships with the team posting an eighth-place finish with 22 points.

In the same season, freshman sensation Collins Kiprop Kipngok boasted one of Kentucky’s finest freshman campaigns in program history. During the outdoor season, Kiprop Kipngok earned SEC Men’s Freshman Runner of the Year honors after claiming the SEC men’s 3000m steeplechase title. The Wildcat freshman broke the UK program record time for the men’s steeplechase event earlier in the season at the Jim Click Shootout with a time of 8:22.67. Kiprop Kipngok would go on to win the 3000m steeplechase event at the NCAA East First Rounds and finish fifth at the NCAA Championships.

As a team, the Wildcats posted 10 program record marks during the 2025 indoor and outdoor seasons, including five records from both the men’s and women’s squads. During the indoor calendar, Cha’iel Johnson, Janet Jepkemboi Amimo and Kate Powers set record-breaking marks on the women’s side, with Ed Bird and Makarawu both breaking records on the men’s side.

In 2022, the women’s track and field team earned a school-record 44 points and third place as a team at the 2022 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships, equaling the best team finish at the competition in school history. Then outdoors, the UK women’s team earned a top-four (trophy) team finish at the Outdoor NCAA Championships for the fourth time ever. UK scored its most points at the NCAA Outdoor Championships since tallying 50 in a national runner-up finish in 2015. UK’s men’s team has also earned multiple top 25 finishes at NCAAs during Greene’s tenure.

At the 2022 SEC Indoor Championships, the women’s team finished third with 79 points, equaling the best finish in program history, and scoring the program’s most points at the SEC Indoor Championships since 1989 when the team finished third with 92 points. The men’s team finished fourth with 64 points, improving their place by three spots and 17 points from a year ago. The men’s team earned its best SEC Indoor finish since placing third in 1995 and 1996.

“We are so proud and appreciative of the job Coach Greene has done leading our young people,” Barnhart said. “Lonnie has exhibited a tremendous commitment to competitive excellence, academic success and helping develop our young students into outstanding human beings. We are excited to build on the commitment we are making in track and field and cross country under Lonnie’s direction. We look forward to continuing to make steps toward building a championship program.”

Greene’s ability to build an elite program in which athletic performance meets exceptional character is perhaps best exemplified by the team’s stewardship of Steiner, who in her four years at UK won three NCAA 200-meter championships, set collegiate records in the 200m indoors and out and ran a blistering fast split on the collegiate-record, NCAA Championship 4x400m relay, three SEC titles, broke the American, collegiate and SEC records, earned 14 All-America honors all while excelling academically to the tune of Academic All-America status and the honor of being named SEC Indoor Track Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Steiner represents just one example in a program full of outstanding student-athletes who combine elite athletic accomplishments with stalwarts of character such as selfless community outreach, academic success and uncommon leadership qualities.

In more than 20 years of coaching at collegiate level, Greene has mentored eight Olympians, including two from the 2012 London Games, and three student-athletes who have competed at the World Championships. Additionally, his student-athletes have competed at the World Junior Championships, World University Games, Pan Am Games, NACAC U-23 Championships and Central American Championships. He has served on the coaching staff for the NACAC U-23 Championships and was selected (but did not serve) as an aide for the Central American Championships.

Prior to his time as the head coach of the Purdue Boilermakers, Greene spent 16 seasons as an assistant in the Southeastern Conference. Greene coached with the women’s program at perennial power Arkansas, serving as associate head coach in charge of sprints, hurdles, horizontal jumps and multi events from 2000-2012. In each of his last two seasons with the Razorbacks, he was named USTFCCCA South Central Regional Assistant Coach of the Year. In 2004, he was named National Assistant Coach of the Year.

In 2024, Greene was inducted into the Arkansas Track & Field Hall of Fame as part of the program’s 29th class to be enshrined. Greene spent 16 seasons at the University of Arkansas starting in 1996 serving as an assistant coach with the women’s program for four years before being promoted to associate head coach in 2000 overseeing the sprints, hurdles, horizontal jumps, and multi events. Greene brought great success to the Razorback track and field program earning multiple USTFCCCA coaching awards including being named USTFCCCA National Assistant Coach of the Year in 2004.

With the Razorbacks, Greene coached four student-athletes to five NCAA event titles, 36 athletes who earned 114 All-America honors, 16 Southeast Conference champions, two Southeastern Conference Runners of the Year, an SEC co-Freshman Runner of the Year, and two USTFCCCA South Central Region Runners of the Year.

“I want to thank UK President Eli Capilouto and Mitch Barnhart  from the bottom of my heart for their commitment and support of our philosophy and strategy as a staff and as a program,” Greene said. “Their leadership, trust and support has been invaluable to me and my family, our staff and our student-athletes. I look forward to building on our success as we work to make even more strides toward championships.”

A native of Nassau, Bahamas, Greene earned his B.S. from Murray State University in 1989. He is married to former Razorback LaTayna Stewart. The couple has a daughter, Charisse; three sons, Cameron, Isaiah and Jacob; and two grandchildren, Tylan and Caleb.

Coaching Experience:

Kentucky – Head Coach, 2018-Present

Purdue – Head Coach, 2012-2017

Arkansas – Associate Head Coach, 2000-2012

Arkansas – Assistant Coach, 1996-200

Minnesota – Assistant Coach, 1995-1996

Missouri State – Assistant Coach, 1991-1995