Mailing Address:
Nebraska Track & Field
1631 Court Street Lincoln, NE 68588-0637
Phone: (402) 472-6461 

Fax: (402) 472-9361 
Email: kgrimes@huskers.com 

• 15 All-America Awards at Nebraska
• Three Individual NCAA Championships
• 13 Big 12 Conference Champions
• Four Straight Big 12 Heptathlon Champions (2006-2009)
• 2009 Midwest Region Assitant Coach of the Year
• 2005 West Region Women's Assistant Coach of the Year
• 2008 Midwest Region Women's Co-Assistant Coach of the Year
• 2007 Midwest Region Jumps/Combined Events Coach of the Year

Kris Grimes returns for his fifth season in 2010 as Nebraska’s combined events and pole vault coach.

Grimes has hit his stride at NU over the past two seasons by sending 10 athletes to the NCAA Championships and coaching athletes to seven Big 12 crowns and seven All-America honors. Overall in four years, Grimes has coached athletes to one national title, 15 All-America honors and 13 conference titles.

The 2009 season was arguably Grimes’ most successful year at NU, as six of his athletes qualified in 11 events at the NCAA Championships, including four athletes who qualified for both the indoor and outdoor national meets.

Grimes’ squads were well represented at the 2009 NCAA Indoor Championships, as four of the five athletes he sent to the meet came home with five All-America honors, including Chantae McMillan, who earned All-America honors in the pentathlon and long jump. McMillan was joined by Megan Wheatley (pentathlon), Seth Burney (pole vault) and Björn Barrefors (decathlon). Just a freshman, Barrefors had a breakout year by setting the school record in the heptathlon at the national meet with a third-place score of 5,795. For his success Grimes was named Midwest Region Women’s Assistant Coach of the Year by the USTFCCCA.

Outdoors, Grimes’ athletes earned two more All-America honors with Burney in the pole vault and Barrefors in the decathlon.

At the conference level, the Huskers continued to dominate the women’s heptathlon with a Husker capturing the league crown for the fifth straight year at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships. Wheatley, who also won the indoor pentathlon crown, won the title for the second straight year after Ashley Selig won titles in 2005 and 2007, with Sara Jane Baker also winning in 2006.

Along with Wheatley’s two conference titles in 2009, the Husker pole vaulters also excelled under Grimes. They won three of the four conference titles. Natalie Willer swept the women’s crowns, while Burney won his first Big 12 title at the outdoor meet.

As a sophomore in 2009, Willer thrived under Grimes as she broke seven pole vault records, including NU’s indoor and outdoor records.  A native of Elkhorn, Neb., Willer also broke the American Junior record (14-4 1/2) and won the Pan-Am Junior Championships with a meet-record vault of 14-1 1/4.

In 2008, Grimes produced five NCAA qualifiers for the outdoor championships, while Wheatley produced the program’s fourth straight heptathlon championship at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships in Boulder, Colo.

Grimes sent eight athletes to the 2007 NCAA Outdoor Championships, including Brysun Stately, the nation’s top-ranked competitor in the women’s pole vault, and Selig, who earned her fifth All-America finish at the meet.

Stately became only the third Husker women’s All-American in the pole vault with a seventh-place finish at the NCAA Indoor Championships. Later in the year she shattered the then-outdoor school record with a mark of 14-3 1/4 during the Kansas Relays.

Selig became the first athlete in Big 12 history with four conference crowns in the combined events. Teammate Jenny Green, who joined Stately competing for NCAA honors in the women’s pole vault, earned the same distinction with her fourth Big 12 victory in the vault.

While the Husker women’s pole vault and combined events groups flourished, his men’s athletes also showed tremendous success at both the national and conference levels. With the addition of men’s decathletes Lee Martin and Skyler Reising, NU led all NCAA squads with four total men’s and women’s entries in the combined events at the national meet in 2007.

Overall, five Husker combined event athletes and three NU vaulters advanced to either the NCAA indoor or outdoor meets in Grimes’ second year.

Grimes experienced an incredibly successful first season at Nebraska in 2006 after joining the Huskers in the fall of 2005. His athletes combined to earn five All-America honors in his first year while helping the men’s and women’s squads place among the top 20 at both NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Championships.

A native of Jefferson City, Mo., Grimes has helped several athletes flourish on the national level during his 21 years of coaching, as his resume boasts 18 All-America athletes who have earned 28 individual honors. Included among the group is two-time NCAA champion Sevatheda Fynes, who Grimes directed to national wins in the 100- and 200-meter dash events at Michigan State.

Grimes brought a wealth of recruiting and coaching experience on the NCAA Division I level with him to Nebraska. He previously served seven seasons as a Washington State assistant and was in charge of the men’s and women’s vertical and horizontal jumps. While with WSU, Grimes tutored pole vaulters Tamara Diles and Tyson Byers to NCAA All-America careers. Matt Mason set an indoor school record of 26-6 1/4 on his way to a sixth-place finish at the NCAA indoor meet in 2004, and Demetrius Murray claimed a silver medal in the triple jump at the 2000 NCAA outdoor meet.

Prior to his post with WSU, Grimes served as interim head women’s track coach at Michigan State in 1996, before being named the Spartans’ interim Director of Women’s Track and Field and Cross Country. He remained in his interim post with MSU until 1998, when he was hired by Washington State. In his first season with the Spartans, Grimes coached an NCAA champion and three All-Americans.

A three-time NCAA Division II All-America pole vaulter at Abilene Christian University, Grimes was a key contributor on four Division II national championship teams. After exhausting his eligibility, he served as an assistant coach for the Wildcats in 1989. Grimes later coached in a graduate assistant role at Missouri from 1990 to 1991. Between his time at Missouri and Michigan State, he spent five years (1992-96) as an assistant in charge of jumps and combined events at Louisiana-Monroe.

Grimes is a United States Track and Field Coaching Education Level II Instructor. He is currently pursuing his Level III certification.

Grimes received his master’s degree in education with concentrations in sport psychology/biomechanics from Missouri in 1992 and his bachelor’s in education from Abilene Christian in 1989, concentrating on psychology/physical education. He is married to Tami Micham Grimes, a former distance runner at ULM and an All-Big Eight cross country runner at Missouri. They have two sons, Kristofor and Jack, and a daughter, Anna.