Larry Weber’s goal as a cross country coach wasn’t to win 13 high school team state championships in 15 years.
He’s done that.
Nor was it his goal to coach five individual state champions, or help multiple elite athletes qualify for the United States Olympic Marathon Trials.
He’s done that, too.
He never sought to be inducted into the Washington State Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame.
As of Jan. 23, Weber will have accomplished that.
But he takes no credit for any of those feats, yet they didn’t happen by accident. All Weber wanted to do in his coaching journey was two things: give athletes the skills they need to succeed in life using cross country as a tool to do so, and to give back what his coaches gave to him back in what he calls the “stone age.”
He’s more than checked those off of his list, and the rest followed suit.
Weber, the current head cross country coach at Pope John Paul II High School in Lacey, is set to be inducted into the Washington State Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Tacoma Murano Hotel on Jan. 23.
“I was surprised. I felt honored by that surprise. It was nice to receive that call,” Weber said.
Weber competed in basketball and football as a junior high student at Chinook Middle School before making a full transition into cross country and track and field at North Thurston High School in the mid-1970s.
“It was a huge peer thing to go from football to cross country. It took a lot to make that leap because all of my friends were in football,” Weber said. “I was pretty good at running, and I had wanted to go to college. I was the first one in my immediate family to go. Running gave me that ticket to do that. I left football because I thought I had more potential in running. That’s how it all started.”
While learning from coaches Dennis McDonald, Steve Dobosz and Brian Anderson at North Thurston, Weber went on to win the 3A state championship in the 880-yard dash in 1976 and set a still-standing Thurston County record in the 800 meters with a time of one minute, 51.7 seconds.
Weber then ran track and cross country at the University of Montana, graduating in 1980. He also ran post-collegiately for Reebok with a team called the “Reebok Harriers.”
But high school coaching didn’t come across his radar as a possibility until much later in life. Weber helped guide post-collegiate athletes, U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers and world-class master’s runners as a volunteer. He coached Karen Steen, a Timberline High School graduate, to the Olympic Marathon Trials and later to the National Master’s Championships. Weber also helped Tony Volpentest set a world record in the 200 meters and win two gold medals at the World Paralympic Track and Field Championships.
But it wasn’t until 2010 that he took a job coaching cross country at Northwest Christian High School, a private school a street over from his alma mater North Thurston High School.
Weber’s daughter Elizabeth was a member of the program, which had already won four consecutive 2B team state titles before his arrival. Weber, despite never coaching a high school team, led Northwest Christian to its fifth straight state title in his debut season.
And then its sixth. And its seventh. And its eighth. And then its ninth, setting a state record for most consecutive state championships.
“They worked really hard together and did really well there. To keep that streak going and to have that kind of camaraderie, that’s not easy,” Weber said. “We had a lot of good leaders in that process, good people who were really developing their skills.”
Weber then decided to retire after the 2016 season. On a random walk in Olympia’s LBA Park in 2017 with his wife Julie, Weber crossed paths with Anthony Herness, the Pope John Paul II cross country coach at the time.
Herness asked Weber if he missed coaching, and Weber admitted that he was. He missed the team environment and camaraderie. Herness then gave Weber an offer to start a girls cross country team at Pope John Paul II, to which Weber immediately agreed.
“I was retired but I was kind of bored,” he said. “I wanted to do something meaningful rather than just kind of hang out. I always loved sports and kids.”
Weber then took on the task of building a program from scratch. Many of the girls had never run cross country before, but they quickly found success through individualized training by Weber and his coaching staff. Seven Eagles qualified for state and led the team to an eighth-place finish at the 1B/2B state meet, and a runner even placed in the top 20.
The next fall, Pope John Paul II won the state championship, defeating reigning three-time state champion Liberty Bell by six points in just its second season as a program. This run to the title was “something out of a movie,” Weber said.
“I still don’t know how it happened. I don’t take credit for it. They were amazing. I can’t explain what happened that day,” he added. “They lost by 99 points to the defending three-time state champion in a big invitational five weeks before the state championship. They were in a car wreck. They were all fine. Five weeks later, they beat [Liberty Bell] by six points in the state championship.”
The Pope John Paul II girls won four straight state titles and then finished second in 2024. Weber also helped the boys win their first ever state title this past fall after they had finished second five times in the previous six state meets.
Five individual high school state champions — Justin Holden, Lucas Graham, Luke Schilter, Ruby Henry and Kevin Hu — also came from Weber’s tutelage.
But Weber’s entire journey isn’t about trophies, podium finishes, or new records. It’s about grit, resilience, and developing skills to use down the road.
“I’m proud of the people that they’ve become in their lives. Some have gone on to be great parents, to be engineers in their field of study, in the military. I track the alumni stories because it’s important to me,” he said. “I’m proudest of building people and seeing them being successful parents, successful in their careers. That’s what I’m most proud of is taking the lessons that maybe they learned from us and applying them to life. Time fades. Nobody remembers state championships. Medals sit in a box. You never look at them again. They don’t remember that, but just the people they became.”
It’s all thanks to the coaches who paved the way for Weber, who described himself as a student who had poor grades and few friends. His coaches “changed everything” for him and helped him earn athletic and academic scholarships through running. Weber’s mission is to pay it forward in respect to his coaches.
“They all invested in my life,” Weber said, a tear appearing in his eye and his voice cracking. “That’s why I became a coach, not to get people faster but to invest in their lives. They were really life coaches as well as athletic coaches. They really took a young, quiet boy who didn’t have a lot of friends and really helped shape my life.”
Weber has documented his Hall of Fame running and coaching journey through his blog at coachweber.org and is writing a book titled “Mile Three: How the Hardest Part Builds the Best People,” where he hopes to share how lessons through cross country apply to life. The book is in the midst of peer review and will likely be available this spring, he said.
But his Hall of Fame journey is one that he won’t take credit for. Weber thanks the coaches he played for, his assistant coaches at Northwest Christian and Pope John Paul II, his student athletes, and his wife Julie, who has become a mentor to the athletes.
That message will be the core of his Hall of Fame speech on Jan. 23.
“Running is just a tool. If it was just about running fast, I wouldn’t be doing it anymore at all,” Weber said. “It’s all about formation and helping them and figuring out how we can help them in life. That’s really why I do it and why my assistants do it and why my wife does it.”
