Ralph Lindeman - Track and Field Coach - Air Force Academy Athletics

Ralph Lindeman

Title:
Head Coach | Combined Events
Email:
ralph.lindeman@afacademy.af.edu
Phone:
719-333-2173

Ralph Lindeman, the recipient of numerous conference and regional coaching awards, is in his 30th season at the helm of the Air Force track and field team. From the very first day he stepped onto the track at the Academy in 1989, the Falcons have benefited from Lindeman's leadership and love of coaching to become one of the most widely-recognized of the Air Force Academy’s intercollegiate programs.

Under his direction, the Air Force men’s track and field team has become one of the most decorated programs in Academy history. Air Force has claimed eight Mountain West titles (2012 indoor, 2012 outdoor, 2013 outdoor, 2016 indoor, 2016 outdoor, 2017 outdoor, 2018 indoor, 2018 outdoor) – five more than all other Academy programs combined – and finished within the top-three of the conference standings 31 times in 38 championship meets. In addition, he has watched the women become a significant presence in the league.

Since Lindeman's arrival at the Air Force Academy, the track and field team has combined for 42 Western Athletic Conference individual championship titles (37 events, five relays) and 146 MW individual championship titles (134 events, 12 relays). Lindeman-coached Air Force teams have produced two NCAA champions, including Callie Calhoun, who earned five Division II titles during her career, and Dana Pounds, who collected back-to-back titles in the javelin at the Division I level, while earning nine additional top-three finishes at the NCAA Championships and 77 All-America awards.

His men’s teams have rewritten Academy Records in 14 of the 17 NCAA Indoor Championship events, and 19 of the 21 NCAA Outdoor events, while his women’s teams have rewritten Records in 15 of the 17 NCAA Indoor events, and 17 of the 21 NCAA Outdoor events.

Lindeman also oversaw the Air Force men’s cross country team during the first three years of his tenure (1989-91) and guided the Falcons to their first-ever conference title at the 1991 Western Athletic Conference Championships. The 1991 cross country team went on to place second at the regional meet and 14th at the NCAA Championships. The team's second-place finish at the regional championships remains the best finish ever by an Air Force cross country team, while its placing at the national meet is the program's second-highest finish since 1967.

In addition to their success on the track, Lindeman’s Air Force athletes have captured 13 CoSIDA Academic All-America awards, 25 Academic All-District honors, 71 USTFCCCA All-Academic distinctions and more than 575 academic all-conference honors from the WAC and Mountain West. In addition, nearly 100 cadet-athletes have collected 192 MW Scholar-Athlete medallions for maintaining a GPA of 3.50 or higher. Lindeman has also seen two athletes selected as Rhodes Scholars and numerous others receive prestigious post-graduate scholarships.

Lindeman has received many coaching distinctions and honors during his tenure. He is a 17-time conference Coach of the Year, a four-time USTFCCCA Mountain Region Men's Outdoor Coach of the Year and a two-time USTFCCCA Mountain Region Men’s Indoor Coach of the Year. He was most recently voted as the Mountain West Conference Men’s Coach of the Year during the 2018 outdoor season, marking the 14th time he has claimed a MW award (indoor: 2001, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2018; outdoor: 2001, 2003, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018). In addition to earning the 1995 WAC Indoor Coach of the Year and the 1991 WAC Cross Country Coach of the Year at Air Force, Lindeman was named the 1989 Big West Coach of the Year while at Long Beach State.

His work is not limited to the boundaries of the Academy, as Lindeman has represented the program throughout his tenure on the national and international stage. Lindeman most recently served as the head coach of the Team USA men’s track and field team that competed at the 2018 World Championships in Birmingham, England. He has also served as an assistant coach for the U.S. Men’s Team that participated at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan, and was on the coaching staff for the U.S. Men's Team at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, charged with coaching the jumpers, vaulters and decathletes. That Olympic team collected 19 medals - including two Gold and five Silver medals from Lindeman-coached athletes - for the squad's highest medal count since the 1992 Games in Barcelona.

He also served as an advisor to the South Korean team at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and was the Scheduling Manager for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. In addition to his work with the Olympic Games, Lindeman has served as the head coach for the USA Men’s team at the 2001 World University Games in Beijing, China, the 1999 Pan American Games in Winnipeg, Canada, and the "North Team" at the 1993 U.S. Olympic Festival in Texas. Lindeman has also served on the coaching staff for the United States men’s team at the 1992 World Junior Championships in Seoul, Korea, and the “West Team” at the 1987 U.S. Olympic Festival in North Carolina.

He sat on the USATF Men’s Development Committee during four Olympic quadrennials, chairing the hurdle sub-committee from 1993-2000. As the chair of that committee, Lindeman coordinated video analysis of all hurdle races at the USA Championships and Olympic Trials. He also managed a series of annual mini-camps for the elite U.S. male hurdlers at San Diego’s Olympic Training Center.

Lindeman first became excited about track and field as a seventh grader at Phoenix Christian Grade School in Arizona, when his physical education teacher took his class to a collegiate track dual-meet featuring Arizona State and New Mexico. Later, the influences of his high school track coaches, according to Lindeman, "unknowingly inspired me to pursue coaching."

Lindeman graduated in 1973 from Arizona State University with a bachelor's degree in physical education. He went on to complete a master's degree in exercise science from ASU in 1976.

His coaching career began in 1973, when he was an assistant coach at Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix, Ariz., working with the football and track teams. From there, he became an assistant track coach at Glendale High School in Glendale, Ariz., working under Ken France, a legend in the Arizona coaching ranks. He later took over as the head coach for Glendale’s cross country and track teams and served in that capacity for five years.

Following a stint as the boys' track and cross country coach at Westwood High School in Mesa, Ariz., Lindeman moved up to the collegiate ranks, becoming an assistant track coach at Arizona State, coaching the field events for the men's team. With Lindeman on staff, the 1982 Sun Devil team won Arizona State's first – and only – PAC-10 title in track and field.

In 1982, Lindeman went to the University of Arizona as an assistant coach of the men's and women's teams, overseeing the sprints, hurdles and jumps. Both the men's and women's teams placed in the top 10 at the 1984 NCAA Championships.

Lindeman credits Len Miller at Arizona State University and Dave Murray at the University of Arizona for giving him his first opportunities at the university level and teaching him about coaching collegiate athletes. For his 11 years of coaching within the state of Arizona, Lindeman was inducted into the Arizona Track Coaches Association's Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 2009.

Lindeman left Arizona in 1984, when he was named the head coach at Long Beach State University. During his five years there, he took the men's and women's track and field teams, as well as the cross country program, to new heights in the Big West Conference. He remained with the 49ers until his appointment at Air Force.

Lindeman has a simple coaching philosophy, which is summed up in the USAF core values - "Integrity first. Service before self. Excellence in all we do". He believes that his role as the head coach is to make sure that the program provides a framework in which the cadet-athletes can achieve excellence, not only athletically, but also academically and militarily.

In addition to his coaching duties, he has been a featured speaker at coaching clinics in 25 states and four countries, while writing articles that have been published in three journals and chapters of the textbooks "Hurdles: Theory and Technique" and the "USA Track and Field Coaching Manual" (1999 edition).

Lindeman has been very active on various track and field committees, as well. He served as the first chairman of the Coaches' Association Ethics Committee, and was elected as the chair of the US Track Coaches Advisory Committee in 2009. He has also sat on the men's hurdle development committee during four Olympic quadrennials, holding the chairman's position from 1993-2000. In addition, he has served on the NCAA Track and Field Rules Committee, acting as the chairman for the 2000 outdoor championships and was the president of the U.S. Track and Field Coaches Association (Division I Coaches) from 2000-03.

Lindeman sees his involvement with these organizations as a way to not only make a significant improvement to the sport of collegiate track and field, but to extend benefits to the development of the Air Force program.

He has been married to his wife, Cindy, for the past 47 years, and they have two children and six grandchildren. Their daughter, Jennifer, an Art teacher in Monument School District 38, and her husband, Brian Rowedder, both graduates of Arizona State, have three children: Maddison, Brock and Landon; while their son, Brian, a firefighter in Parker, Colo. and former Colorado high school state champion in the pole vault, is married to Heather Dunavint, and together they have twin girls, Elsie and Mira, and a son, Brogan.