LEIGH (DANIEL) CORDES | HEAD COACH

Leigh joined the LCU Athletic Department in the fall of 2014 as the assistant Cross-Country and Track coach. Since then, she has taken over the women’s side to become the Head Coach of Women’s Cross-Country and Track. Leigh is a Lubbock, Texas native and attended both Monterey High School and Texas Tech University.

In her eight years leading the women, the Lady Chaps have placed fifth or higher in all but two of the conference championship meets for cross country. Highlights of her tenure on the distance running side of coaching include an individual title from Amira McKee at the Heartland Conference Championships and a second place team finish for the Lady Chaps in 2018. Then in 2018, McKee won again and LCU claimed the Lone Star Conference title. McKee earned LSC Runner of the Year honors and Cordes was named Women’s Coach of the Year for the 2019 season after the performance.

The track & field team did not exist when Cordes was hired as an assistant to her husband in 2015, but the two quickly remedied that by announcing the addition of the program in the fall of 2016, and the teams began competition in the spring of 2017, although nearly exclusively in distance events with the athletes already running cross country. In January of 2020 though, Lubbock Christian announced plans to build a new Soccer & Track Complex on campus, which allowed for the expansion to a full track & field team.

During the first season of track competition, Amira Cunningham (McKee) grabbed a pair of podium finishes, with Amira Cunningham (McKee) taking second in both the 3,000-meter steeplechase and the 5,000-meter.

In the five seasons of track & field competition, Cordes has coached 15 All-Conference selections, four of which came on the Distance Medley relay team that placed second at the 2021 LSC Indoor Track & Field Championships. With the 2021 season being the first with LCU competing with a full team, they placed eighth at the indoor conference championships and eighth at the league’s outdoor meet.

The first collegiate coaching experience Cordes got was at another Division II school, Ashland, where she consistently placed her women’s cross-country team on the All-Academic award ballot from 2005 to 2009 seasons. In 2008, Leigh’s women’s cross-country team obtained a 3.713 team grade point average (second highest in the country). In the 2009 season, she coached a women’s outdoor track squad that received the NCAA Div. II Women’s Scholar Athlete Team of the year.

A participant in tennis, basketball and running at Monterey, she ascended to the top of the country quickly with her running skills. At TTU, she was a two-time national champion on the track (TTU's first ever individual national champion). After college Leigh trained in two of most notable professional training groups in the country, Team USA Mammoth Lakes and Hanson/Brooks. During that time, she was teammates with multiple future Olympians and gained a wealth of knowledge and experience. She later put her knowledge and background into coaching at the collegiate level, becoming the Head Women's Cross Country/Assistant Track Coach at Ashland University.

Leigh is married to LCU’s Director of Cross-Country and Track Nick Cordes. The couple has been married since 2009 where they were wed on the 10th annual “Today Throws a Wedding” on NBC’s Today Show. Together they have three children (daughters: Carsyn and Masyn, son: Drew).