Recently, in response to a “campus consensus” survey by The Observer, multiple students cited complaints with coaching on the Track and Field and Cross Country teams. One survey respondent claimed, “Nearly every member of the Cross Country team disapproves of the new distance coach put in charge. The last time someone tried to stand up for the athletes, they were removed.” 

The Observer spoke with four athletes about the current climate on the team and also reviewed a complaint one student filed with Human Resources about multiple issues involving the program under Head Coach Jonathan Hill and Assistant Coach/Distance Coach Matt Layton. The Observer reached out by email to Coach Hill for comment. He replied, “With this particular request, I don’t have any desire to comment.”

Coach Hill came to CWU in 2023 after five seasons as an assistant coach for Division I school Rice University. Coach Layton came to CWU the same year from the University of Louisville. 

According to CWU Athletic Director Dr. Dennis Francois, “Anytime there’s situations where student athletes might not be happy with a new coach and other new things, change is difficult, and it is different for everybody. It’s difficult for new coaches coming into a new environment. It’s difficult for student athletes who are used to a different coach who recruited them. Now I’ve got this person who I don’t know and might not agree with their philosophy and might not be a good fit for me. These are decisions that student athletes make.”

“Hopefully, they see what Coach Hill and Coach Layton are trying to develop here, and we would love to have them along for that ride and buy into what’s happening,” Francois said.

Physical and Mental Health

The athletes interviewed expressed concerns about their teammates’ mental well-being while on the roster, claiming they endured mistreatment by the coaches. Multiple athletes confirmed hearing Coach Hill say, “We are not here to make happy athletes, we’re here to make winners.” 

One athlete, Athlete 1, who, along with all the other student athletes interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity out of a concern that they could lose their roster spot or face retaliation, complained about how coaches viewed injured athletes. “It’s almost like when you’re injured, you don’t matter anymore. I’ve had weeks on end where I almost haven’t even been talked to by the coaching staff because I’ve been injured,” Athlete 1 said. 

Athlete 1 also alleged that there has been more than one instance where the coaches have pushed athletes too hard during injuries. Athlete 1 claimed that Coach Hill and Coach Layton were pushing two athletes so hard that it led to both needing surgery. Athlete 1 claimed the coaches were adamant they never needed to go get the injuries checked out by professionals, continuing to put the athletes through cross training instead of tending the injuries. 

According to Athlete 2, some athletes have been forced to race through injury. “There is one athlete who is in excruciating pain and I’ve had a friend with this exact same injury and they had to have surgery. Coaches are telling them they’re not allowed to get imaging done, telling them they are not allowed to go to an actual doctor about it and that they just need to keep on running,” Athlete 2 said. 

“Instead of taking their training back to let them heal, they have increased the number of workouts they are doing per week and because they physically can’t handle the pain anymore, they scaled back the length of their workouts and added another one into the week to compensate for the fact they couldn’t do longer workouts. They are still making them race, it’s really been awful.”

Athlete 2 asserted that the coaches’ methods have taken a toll on the athletes in a negative way, stating they are worried about some of their teammates’ mental health. “I have a friend running for a university in the midwest who had similar issues with coaching. One of her teammates actually committed suicide, in large part due to the toxicity of the coach. The university’s athletic admin did not do anything until it was too late. So now I’m sitting here, wondering which one of my teammates is going to have to lose their life before the admin will be willing to do anything about the things we’re experiencing.”

Francois described how CWU handles the mental and physical health of the athletes. “We want to make sure they have the best training possible, but a lot of times, the actual philosophy might not be as good of a fit as it was with our previous coach. In terms of training and mental health, we have a plethora of services available to our student athletes and students,” Francois said. 

“We definitely make those services known to our student athletes and constantly talk about those things in our orientation, and I’m sure our coaches are doing it on a somewhat regular basis in terms of mental health. That’s something we definitely don’t ignore in any of our programs. I’m confident in terms of injuries, it comes down to having trust in our student-athlete athletic trainers and making sure they are prescribing to them the regimen for recovery and therapy to get back to training at the top level.”

“Make it Yours”

In Division II sports, the slogan is “Make it Yours,” recognizing that the athletes’ lives do not fully revolve around their respective sport. They have personal matters such as work, school, family or even a basic social life outside athletics. “It’s almost kind of like [Coach Hill and Coach Layton] don’t get that,” Athlete 1 said. “It’s like all there is in life is training and doing everything to make yourself better. They’re basically guilting us for doing anything besides constant running, Track and Field and Cross Country.”

Touching on the NCAA’s Division II slogan, Francois suggested the team is thriving in terms of their academics as well as the results they are seeing at events. “‘Make it yours’ is really the balance part of it where it’s not over the top 24/7 and rules your day. No doubt it does demand a priority within your life, but there is still time to make sure you’re taking care of academics. Which our student athletes have proven time and time again,” Francois said. “Last year, we had a 3.31 GPA for student athletes, that was very impressive … I think the results academically and the results athletically are kind of speaking for themselves in terms of Coach Hill and Coach Layton.”

Athlete 1, who initially said they were hesitant to speak to The Observer for this story, explained why they eventually agreed to be interviewed. “When I chose to do this interview, I was thinking about it for a while. Like, do I think this is morally right to kind of just go and slam my coaches pretty much? And to be honest, I don’t really think it’s ok, but I’m not doing it for me … I just want to raise awareness so hopefully the people who come to this program after me, and who love this school as much as I do, don’t have to go through the same stuff we did.”

A third athlete said that CWU’s Track and Field program was not what they envisioned it to be. “If I could go back, I would have gone to Western Washington,” Athlete 3 said.

Something the athletes are looking for is equality between the players. “They kind of let people who are lower to middle class when it comes to competition be forgotten,” Athlete 4 alleged. “It doesn’t matter if you’re fast, middle class or slow, [a coach should] just try and communicate and listen to everybody no matter their ability or talent.” 

Communication Issues

Students claimed that communication between the coaches and athletes has been poor as well. Athlete 2 claimed that Coach Hill would occasionally not send out a practice schedule and ask athletes to be at practice last minute. Students claimed they had classes that would conflict with this sudden practice and then be in trouble for not being able to make it. “The communication issues with Coach Hill, double for Coach Layton. He has refused to respond to us ever since the indoor conference championship this year where both teams got second,” Athlete 2 said, referring to the GNAC Indoor Championships in Spokane, Wash. on Feb. 17 and Feb. 18. “He has been extraordinarily rude to us, refusing to respond to people’s messages. He will say he is going to talk to you, then completely disappear and straight up not talk to you.”

“This season, [Coach Hill] took a sprinter and put her on the women’s Cross Country roster so we can have one more male spot,” recalled Athlete 1. “She had no intent of running Cross Country. We’ve asked her many times if she actually had any intent, if they asked her if she wanted to do this at all and she said, ‘No, I never wanted to run Cross Country, ’” Athlete 1 said.

The problems did not stop at communication. “We were really struggling with Coach Layton, nobody was feeling like our training was progressing. Nobody felt like he really trusted or respected us,” Athlete 2 said. “Their first season with the team, we started with 14 girls on the roster. This coming fall, we had five girls return. Only one graduated from the program.”

Students alleged there was an instance where one of the team captains of the team got kicked off the team for standing up for their teammates. “As a result of that, I think there are a lot of athletes who are afraid to speak up about what is happening in the way people are being treated … By getting rid of essentially the voice of the team and silencing them, Coach Hill made it clear that if you speak up, you’re out.”

Policies around food seemed to be an issue as well. Athlete 2 spoke of an instance they saw where some team members were grabbing snacks during a training run. One of the injured athletes grabbed a snack along with some of the top-performing members of the team. According to Athlete 2, Coach Hill told the athlete that since they aren’t running, they are not allowed to grab snacks despite being at the training and unable to obtain food for multiple hours. 

There was talk between the team members about another circumstance where an athlete was hospitalized recovering from a serious eating disorder. Athlete 2 also alleged that a team member told them that Coach Hill said, “It sounds like the team needs to learn to be less emotional about food.”

Intervention Meeting

These issues have been ongoing for more than a year. On March 4, 2024, a meeting was held for the team to talk over the issues the athletes had with Coach Layton. Despite the meeting, very little progress was made towards mending the relationship between the two sides, according to two athletes who attended.

“We had a couple of intervention meetings last year; this was one of those meetings,” Athlete 1 said. “We were actually going to address problems we had with Coach Layton. Basically, Coach Hill kind of pushed Layton into the corner and did all the talking for him. He acted as a brick wall between us and our distance coach. Nothing really came of that meeting. Nothing positive anyway.”

In that same meeting, a couple of athletes brought up financial struggles they were experiencing. “A couple of guys kind of brought up that they were having financial hardship. Like, ‘Hey, we’re being required to practice way too much, I can’t even get a job to pay for school,’” Athlete 1 said. “ These are guys who aren’t on scholarship, basically running for free. They were asking, ‘Maybe we can do something about Saturday practices, maybe we can not have them or just move them to a different time so I can still go to work.’ In response, I don’t want to misquote him because I don’t remember exactly what he said, but basically implying that people with financial hardship shouldn’t have the opportunity to run in college. Which was pretty hard to hear.”

Francois talked about the growth and success the team has seen over the past two years and the direction in which the team is going. “We have six individuals going to nationals this week and that’s pretty impressive. The showing a couple of weeks ago indoors was impressive, knowing where we were two years ago. I think that speaks to the type of program we want to build here,” Francois said.