When prospective students inquire about running at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge, head cross country coach Dee Brown pulls no punches.
“I tell them, ‘There are going to be times when you’ll freeze your butt off,’” Brown, 42, said. “’Cause when that wind comes whipping through in January, you’re going to be cold. And we don’t have an indoor track, so we’re outside. Even our sprinters do most of their work outside.’”
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“For kids coming here from small towns in the area, Fort Dodge [population 25,000] is the big city; it’s where they’ve come to shop at the mall,” Brown said. “But for kids from Miami or Chicago, this is nothing. It’s itty-bitty, middle-of-nowhere cornfields. So it’s all about perspective.”
Since starting both programs from scratch 13 years ago, Brown has amassed more trophies than just about any two-year college coach in the nation. ICCC now regularly feeds runners to NCAA Division I programs, and the men’s and women’s cross country teams sit atop the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division I rankings as of November 2. The national championship is November 12.
Brown’s route to ICCC was unorthodox. A junior varsity runner while at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, he majored in computer science and business and joined an insurance company after he graduated in 1996. Soon, however, he returned to Luther to work as a computer programmer and assist with the cross country and track teams. Working with young athletes struck a chord, and Brown decided to pursue a master’s degree in physical education then find a full-time coaching position.
Iowa Central decided to add cross country and track to it athletics offerings in late 2003. Despite lacking head coaching experience, Brown submitted his résumé.
When he was hired in January 2004, Brown had seven months to plan the new programs, hire assistant coaches, and begin recruiting. The men and women both finished 13th at NJCAA cross country nationals in 2004 before vaulting to second and third, respectively, in 2005. The women won the program’s first national title in 2007, and they have stood atop the podium four times since. The ICCC men claimed a trio of runner-up trophies before taking the title in 2014 and repeating last fall.
Individual national champions for ICCC have included Stanley Kebenei (in 2012), who later was All-American at Arkansas and this year made the final of the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase at the U.S. Olympic trials, Hannah Maina (in 2013), a leading runner at Middle Tennessee State after leaving ICCC, and Leanne Pompeani in 2015.
Brown stepped down as head track coach in 2009 after determining he was spread too thin directing both programs. Now Brown focuses on his distance runners and on recruiting for both cross country and track.
“It’s a challenge, it really is,” Brown says of recruiting at a two-year school. “Every year about three-quarters of our team is brand new, so that’s a lot of turnover. When I get a kid for two full years I’m lucky.”
If you’ve graduated from secondary school or have a high school graduation equivalency diploma (GED), you’re eligible for athletics at community colleges. Increasing numbers of international student-athletes aspiring to compete on the NCAA Division I level are finding community colleges attractive, because admission requirements are generally less stringent than those at four-year institutions.
“We’ve gained the respect of a lot of bigger universities,” Brown said, “and coaches will call us if they’ve got a kid who isn't going to be a qualifier [academically]. That’s how Stanley Kebenei ended up here—Mark Carroll at Auburn called and said, ‘Hey, this is a kid you’ve got to take.’”
Brown’s top runner this fall is Pompeani, who arrived in Fort Dodge from Canberra, Australia, in August 2015 and won the NJCAA cross country title that November. A week later she triumphed at the NJCAA half-marathon championship, running 1:17:42, and during the indoor and outdoor track seasons won another four national titles.
Pompeani, 20, was apprehensive about adjusting to the harsh Iowa winters—after all, Canberra’s all-time low stands at 14 degrees, while Fort Dodge has seen -32.
“Before Christmas it wasn’t so bad,” she said. “But when I came back after break I realized winter gets 10 times worse in January.” Pompeani admits she used ICCC’s treadmills frequently. Hoping to move on to an NCAA Division I program next year, Pompeani has already been named NJCAA athlete of the week three times this fall.
The progression on to Division I is both a challenge and a sign of success, according to Brown.
“Some schools want the kid who can run a certain time and score points, end of story,” Brown said. “Here we work kids super-hard, but we also have a lot of fun. And we want them to get their degrees. Then I want them to find another home, take the next step after Iowa Central.”
