University of Northwestern Women's Cross Country

Thiessen leading the University of Northwestern men's and women's cross country and men's and women's track and field programs. Throughout his tenure at Northwestern, Thiessen has produced successful teams at the conference, regional, and national levels. Since he began in the fall of 1992, Steve has led the men's cross country program to five conference championships and five team appearances in the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) national championship invitational, finishing as high as 10th in the nation. The women's program has recorded a handful of conference championships under Coach Thiessen and has reached the NCCAA national championship invitational on 10 ocassions, earning as high as a seventh place finish in the country. Since he took over the program, he has produced seven NCCAA All-Americans, 44 NCCAA Academic All-Americans, eight National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Academic All-Americans, 69 all-conference honorees, and 10 individual conference champions. He has been named the conference coach of the year on numerous occasions for both the men and women, with the most recent recognition coming in the fall of 2005 for the womens program. A very familiar figure to Northwestern, Steve ran for the Eagles during his collegiate career in the early 1990's and collected both all-conference and NCCAA Scholar-Athlete award recognition. He led the 2005 men's squad to a conference title and guided the 1999 and 2003 Eagle women outdoor teams to the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC) championship. Steve has also overseen the development of several successful Northwestern individual track athletes as the program has produced seven NCCAA All-American selections and one NAIA All-American honoree in the past four campaigns.