Nate Rucker returns for his 13th season at Upper Iowa in 2024-25. He will be in his 13th season as the head women's cross country coach and tenth as the head women's indoor and outdoor track and field coach, a program that was brought back in 2015. During his time with the Peacocks, Rucker has coached three NSIC Individual Champions, with two in the shot put and one in the weight throw.
Prior to Upper Iowa, Rucker spent four years as the Director of the Cross Country and Track and Field programs at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Ala.
Upon joining the Huntingdon staff in 2008, Rucker began the cross country program and produced a conference championship team during the Hawks' first season of competition. During his four seasons with the Hawks, the men's cross country program won three Great South Athletic Conference titles and the women's team won two GSAC championships, for which Rucker was named the GSAC Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year. Rucker has helped develop 23 All-Conference runners and three runners that have combined for six individual conference titles.
The Hawks have had 21 academic All-Conference selections, two male runners named to the GSAC Freshman team and one female runner named GSAC Freshman of the Year. Rucker has earned GSAC Coach of the Year five out of a possible eight times. The women's team also earned USTFCCCA Academic All-American honors in 2010 and 2011.
In addition to his work at Huntingdon, Rucker coached the 2010 U.S. Junior National Racewalk team to a victory in Toronto, Canada. The team consisted of six males and six females.
Before his time in Montgomery, Ala., Rucker spent three seasons at Central Methodist University as head cross country and assistant track and field coach. During his time with the Eagles, he helped produce eight individual conference champions and three NAIA national qualifiers in men's and women's cross country and track and field. He earned Heart of America Athletic Conference Coach of the Year honors for his work with the women's cross country team in 2007.
Rucker also coached an Olympic Trials Qualifier in the men's 20k Racewalk. Rucker worked with five-time national champion Patrick Stroupe during four of Stroupe's championships in the indoor and outdoor seasons.
Before CMU, Rucker spent two seasons as the head cross country and assistant track and field coach at his alma mater, the University of Dubuque. During that time, Rucker mentored a three-time men's NCAA Indoor National Champion 55m hurdler and received the Jesse Owens Award from the Black Student Union. The Spartans' men's and women's teams set eight school records during those two seasons.
In the fall of 2003, Rucker served as an assistant at Washington University in St. Louis. Rucker worked on a staff that was named Coaching Staff of the Year in the conference. Washington University won the men's and women's conference championships and the women's individual conference title that season.
Rucker's collegiate coaching began with a two-year stint as a graduate assistant at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo.
Rucker earned his undergraduate degree in communications in 2001 from the University of Dubuque, where he was a four-year member of the cross country and track and field teams. He also earned his master's degree in education from Southwest Baptist in 2003.
Rucker is married to his wife Betsy. The couple has two daughters, Claire and Leah and two sons, Kale and Connor.
