photo by: Photo courtesy of Kansas Athletics

University of Kansas track and field coach Stanley Redwine observes the action at a practice in 2021.

Kansas track and field coach Stanley Redwine will serve as the head coach of the U.S. men’s track and field team at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

USA Track & Field announced Redwine’s appointment on Feb. 21, and in a KU Athletics press release issued Tuesday, Redwine expressed his appreciation for the honor, saying he is “excited that I get to be around the other coaches from other schools and just to help Team USA get better.”

“Being around those athletes, there’s not a lot that they really need from me, but I will get more out of it than they will,” he added. “Just to serve them is a great opportunity.”

International coaching is hardly new for Redwine, who served as an assistant coach for USA Track and Field in the 2020 Olympics (contested over the summer of 2021 in Tokyo) and got a head coaching gig at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. He also had a lengthy career as a middle-distance runner himself and qualified for five straight Olympic trials between 1980 and 1996 before becoming KU’s track coach in 2000.

According to his bio on KU’s website, Redwine “has coached 20 individual champions, 240 All-Americans and 12 Olympians while at KU as well as 23 national championship teams between his years as head coach at Kansas and Tulsa and an assistant coach at Arkansas.” He received a three-year contract extension during the summer of 2022.

Redwine will see at least a couple of familiar faces in Paris as current athlete Michael Joseph has qualified to compete for St. Lucia and former Kansas Relays meet director Tim Weaver is also serving USA Track & Field at the Olympics as an event manager.

“My relationship with him goes back to me coaching him as an athlete at the University of Tulsa and then him coming here before me and helping recommend my name for the University of Kansas job,” Redwine explained in the release. “Our relationship has been strong, and he is an excellent guy. He will do an excellent job and has done an excellent job for Team USA.”

The Olympics begin July 26.

“Stanley is an elite teacher, leader and communicator, and the success he has achieved throughout the entirety of his career reflects those traits,” KU athletic director Travis Goff said in the release. “We have no doubt he will represent Kansas Athletics in the first-class manner he always does while he is leading Team USA in Paris.”