CLU Sports

Matt Lea

  • Head Coach
  • 1st year
  • Arizona ('03)


Phone: 805.493.3862
E-Mail: mlea@clunet.edu

Matt Lea is entering his first season as head coach of the men’s and women’s track and field and cross country teams. Lea was an assistant coach for the past two years before moving into his new role.

Lea has been coaching for four years, with two years at the NCAA Division I level at UC Santa Barbara. During his short time at UC Santa Barbara, he was part of the women’s Big West Conference Championship. He has coached nine outdoor regional and national qualifiers, six Big West Champions, 28 All-Big West Honors, eight UC Santa Barbara School Records and 37 Top-10 All-Time marks. Under Lea’s direction, Kylie McCuen became one of the most decorated athletes in UC Santa Barbara Gaucho history and was named Big West Conference Female Athlete of the Year in 2005.

In 2007, Lea guided CLU’s Kyle Hansen to two SCIAC Championships in the 110-meter hurdles and 400-meter hurdles. Hansen qualified for the NCAA Championships in the 400-meter hurdles where he went on to place 15th in the nation as a sophomore.

During the 2008 track and field season, Hansen became the SCIAC Champion in the long jump, 110-meter hurdles and the 400-meter hurdles. He qualified in all three events for the NCAA Championships and was named SCIAC Track and Field Male Athlete of the Year. Lea also coached both the men’s and women’s 4x100 meter relay teams to SCIAC Championships, as well as 37 SCIAC All-Conference Honors.

An accomplished competitor in his own right, Lea was an NCAA All-American and in 2001 his 4x400 meter relay team finished fourth in the nation. He was also a four-time All-Pac 10 honoree in the 400-meter.

On some of his rare weekends off, Lea attends clinics across the country. Lea was recently named to the NCAA Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee as a national facilitator, where he helps younger student-athletes as well as administrators around the country develop better leadership abilities and skills that they can take back to their own institutions. In other clinics, Lea attends as a student to learn from other coaches and to bring back new ideas for the program at CLU to improve his athlete’s development.

Lea earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Arizona in 2003. He is married to Rebecca Lea a former hurdler for the University of Arizona.