Bio

Having taken the Cowley College track and field program to incredible heights, Mark Phillips will be inducted into the Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday, January 18.

Phillips is in his 17th year as the head track and field coach at Cowley. He has guided the Tiger men’s track and field team to six of the past 13 indoor conference titles and five of the past 13 outdoor conference championships. He has also led the women’s team to three straight indoor conference titles and back-to-back outdoor conference titles.

During the 2019 season, Phillips helped the Lady Tigers finish ninth nationally during both the Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

In 2008, Phillips led Cowley’s men’s team to its first ever Jayhawk East Conference Triple Crown winning championships in indoor track, outdoor track and cross country.
In Phillips time at Cowley, he has led the Tigers to two national championships, 32 Jayhawk Conference titles, 11 Region VI titles, and 14 top-five finishes at the NJCAA National Championships.

He has also served as an assistant cross country coach at the school and helped the 2010 men and women’s cross country teams capture national championships.

Prior to coming to Cowley, he spent 12 years at Johnson County Community College, including four years as head coach.
During his tenure at Johnson, Phillips played a key role in a lengthy list of cross country and track team accomplishments.

Prior to coming to Johnson County, Phillips coached pole vault, long jump, triple jump, heptathlon and decathlon at Northwest Missouri State University in 1985 and 1986. He coached jumps, sprints, heptathlon and decathlon as an assistant at Cloud County Community College in 1988 and 1989, where he coached five All-Americans. From the fall of 1989 to the spring of 1991, he was the head cross country and track and field coach at Kansas City Community College, where he turned the program into a national contender in the sprints, coaching 34 All-Americans.
The Northwest Missouri State graduate also saw his share of success as a collegiate student-athlete. He was a pole vaulter/sprinter at Cloud County and Northwest. At Cloud, Phillips was a Region VI champion and a two-time national qualifier in the pole vault. At Northwest, he set school and Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association records while winning three conference championships in the pole vault and as a member of a school record and National Collegiate Athletic Association Division II national qualifying 4x100-meter relay team. He was a member of the 1982 MIAA conference championship team and qualified for two NCAA Division II national meets in the pole vault.

He was born in Topeka, KS and raised in Americus, KS. He was a three-sport standout at Northern Heights High School where he earned all-state honors in football, all-league honors in basketball, and placed third in the pole vault his senior year at the Kansas State Track and Field Championships.

He went on to compete in track and field at Cloud County Community College where he was the Region VI outdoor champion in the pole vault and finished seventh at national indoor his sophomore year.

He then transferred to Northwest Missouri State University and held both indoor and outdoor school records in the pole vault and the 4x100 meter relay for a few years while also holding the MIAA League record in the pole vault for a couple years both indoor and outdoor.

Phillips helped NWMSU win its first indoor conference team championship in school history and that team was inducted into the NWMSU Hall-of-Fame. That team also won the conference outdoor championship back-to-back years.

Phillips received a bachelor’s degree in physical education from Northwest in 1984. He stayed on at NWMSU in a GA position for a couple of years and while doing that trained for the decathlon and competed in three decathlons each year.

“That taught me a lot about the other events,” Phillips said.
It was during his time in college that he decided he wanted to get into coaching.

“When I decided to go to college that’s all I wanted to do,” Phillips said.

Phillips considers his high school basketball coach Randy Ackerman, Cloud County coach Harry Kitchener, and NWMSU coaches Richard Alsup and Richard Flanagan as mentors.

“I enjoy when the student-athletes do everything they are supposed to do and reap the rewards for doing so,” Phillips said.

The always humble Phillips attributes his work ethic and others for his success at Cowley.

“I attribute our team’s success to my motivation to be good and the great assistant coaches I have had, and of course my wife Naomi understanding what I do,” Phillips said.

He earned his master’s degree in education from University of Berkley-Michigan in 2001 and is USA Track and Field certified Level 1 coaching and Level 2 Jumps.

He and his wife Naomi have three children, Katie, Josh, and Justin. Josh was a two-time All-American in the pole vault during his time at Cowley and holds both the indoor and outdoor school records in the event, while Justin is a current sophomore pole vaulter for the Tiger track and field team.

Phillips is humbled to be selected for induction into the Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame.

“I can’t believe this is really happening. I never even thought about being elected into the Hall-of-Fame,” Phillips said.