Former Guilford College head track and field/cross country coach Bill Cason has been named to the same position at St. Andrews University.

Last week, St. Andrews second-year cross country coach Mike Coggins resigned from his coaching duties to pursue other opportunities in his home state of South Carolina. St. Andrews athletic director Glen Batten selected Cason to fill the coaching vacancy shortly thereafter.

“We are thrilled to have Bill Cason as our new cross country coach,” Batten said. “His wealth of experience in coaching and recruiting will invigorate the program and help us take it to the next level.”

Spending the past three seasons at Guilford, Cason was responsible for establishing the track and field program and coaching the cross country program. He also coached an All-American sprinter at Guilford in 2011 and numerous other NCAA qualifiers in just the program’s second year. Cason’s cross country team was nominated for the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Academic All-American award as well.

Cason began his coaching career at Clemson University where he served as the head cross country coach and assistant track and field coach from 1985-88. He won the 1987 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Men’s Cross Country Coach of the Year award as his team captured the 1987 ACC title and went on to place 11^th in the NCAA meet. Cason coached multiple distance runners to All-American honors and ACC individual titles as well as Olympic team berths. He earned his master’s degree in counseling from Clemson and his bachelor’s degree in health and physical education from the University of Florida.

In 1988, Cason was hired as Head Cross Country coach at UNC Wilmington and asked to start the school’s track and field teams from scratch. He went on to lead three athletes to four Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) titles and nine all-conference cross country nominations.

“St. Andrews has a tradition of having great runners and very competitive teams,” Batten said. “Bill has everything you look for in a coach to build on that tradition.”

The St. Andrews University Knights compete in the Appalachian Athletic Conference (AAC) as a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).