Walt Drenth’s Michigan State run is headed for a new honor this weekend, with the former Spartans director of cross country and track & field set to be inducted into the Michigan State Athletics Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2026.
Drenth is one of seven inductees this year, joining Lindsay Bowen from women’s basketball, Dan Currie and Tico Duckett from football, Sue Latter-Addison from women’s cross country and track & field, Kalin Lucas from men’s basketball and Leah O'Connor from women’s cross country and track & field.
The Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Celebration is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 11, with a special recognition of the class also set for the Michigan State-Eastern Michigan football game at Spartan Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 12.
The Hall of Fame itself sits in the Clara Bell Smith Student-Athlete Academic Center and opened on Oct. 1, 1999. It features plaques for the 193 previous inductees, following the charter class of 30 former Spartan student-athletes, coaches and administrators that went in back in 1992.
For Drenth, the call to the Hall comes after a coaching career that put him among the most accomplished figures in Michigan State athletics history. He arrived as head men’s cross country coach in 2004 and was later elevated in 2006 to oversee men’s and women’s track & field and cross country.
The results piled up quickly. Drenth guided MSU to five women’s cross country Big Ten titles in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2019, plus the 2015 Big Ten women’s outdoor track & field championship. His 2014 NCAA women’s cross country national title remains Michigan State’s most recent national team championship.
“This doesn't happen without the support of my wife and family,” said Drenth. “Coaching is very demanding of time and energy, and to be able to do it at a high level is quite a privilege. After all of the time I was gone and the demands of coaching, I can't say enough about their contributions.”
Drenth also credited the people around him at Michigan State for making the success possible.
“I feel a great sense of gratitude for the people that I worked with at Michigan State,” said Drenth. “The athletes, the staff, and everyone who helped us become competitive. You don't become competitive in a vacuum, so I'm grateful for all of the people at MSU that chose to surround themselves within our program.”
His résumé includes six Big Ten Coach of the Year awards - five in women’s cross country and one in women’s outdoor track & field - along with five Great Lakes Region Coach of the Year honors and the 2014 USTFCCCA Women’s National Coach of the Year award.
“The relationships are what I take away from my time at Michigan State,” Drenth said. “The culmination of things that were able to happen are the result of mentoring amazing people, and phenomenal parents, that can have a cumulative effect of a lot of positive influences. For me, one of the great joys of coaching was just watching amazing people grow and recognizing that great people can come from anywhere if they put the work in.”
The numbers behind his tenure tell the rest of the story. Under Drenth, Spartan athletes collected two individual NCAA titles, 37 Big Ten titles, 51 NCAA Championships appearances and 180 All-American honors. In the classroom, Michigan State earned 18 Academic All-American teams, 81 individual Academic All-Americans and 729 Academic All-Big Ten selections.
That balance of performance and development was at the center of Drenth’s approach.
Throughout Drenth's tenure, his philosophy was to help student-athletes become the best version of themselves as not only athletes, but as people and students, too.
The peak of the program came during the 2014-15 season, when Michigan State claimed two Big Ten titles and a national championship in the same year. The women’s cross country team won the 2014 Big Ten title and then followed with a national championship at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, where MSU put four runners in the Top 21 and scored 85 points to capture the first women’s national title in program history.
Later that season, Leah O'Connor-Falland won her second career NCAA individual title, taking the women’s mile in record time at the 2015 NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships.
Michigan State then finished the year with another big statement on its home track, winning the Big Ten women’s outdoor title at Ralph Young Field. O'Connor-Falland swept the Big Ten 3,000-meter steeplechase, 1,500-meter and 5,000-meter races, and the Spartans piled up 128 points to win the conference by 31.
“Winning the women's Big Ten Outdoor championship was a really special moment in my career,” explained Drenth. “It was very hard.
My first year at Michigan State we were last at the Big Ten Outdoor Championships for the women, and to see them grow and to see a staff buy into an idea that you could be more than that, I think was probably as hard as anything. We were able to get a group of kids that believed and worked, and grew, and to see the program become competitive was gratifying.”
O'Connor-Falland will go into the Hall of Fame alongside Drenth in the Class of 2026, something Drenth called especially fitting.
“I think it's really cool to be going in at the same time as Leah,” said Drenth. “She's certainly well deserving as there are not many people in any conference that score 30 points and to win every event she contested. She was a huge contributor to that Big Ten Championship and part of our group that really bought into the vision.”
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