Helen Lehman-Winters - Track and Field Coach - University of Oregon Athletics

Helen Lehman-Winters

Title:
Associate Head Coach (XC, Distance)
Email:
hlehwint@uoregon.edu

Helen Lehman-Winters is in her fourth season as associate head coach at Oregon, working directly with the UO women’s distance program. She came to Eugene prior to the 2018-19 campaign after 15 years as the head coach at the University of San Francisco.

Through three seasons with the Ducks, Lehman-Winters has coached two NCAA individual champions in Jessica Hull and Carmela Cardama Baez and three Pac-12 champions in Hull, Cardama Baez and Aneta Konieczek. Overall, the women’s distance crew has collected 21 All-America accolades and established five Oregon school records under Lehman-Winter’s direction.

Both Hull (Australia) and Konieczek (Poland) qualified and represented their home countries at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo.

In Lehman-Winters’ first season with the program, the Women of Oregon were the Pac-12 and NCAA West Region champions in cross country, and ran to a third-place finish at the 2018 NCAA Cross Country Championships. The Ducks were aided at the national meet by a trio of All-America performances from Hull (third), Weronika Pyzik (12^th) and Cardama Baez (31^st).

Hull’s finish at the NCAA Cross Country Championships marked a 90-spot improvement from her outing the previous season. That season, she was also the runner-up at the Pac-12 Championships and NCAA West Region Championships.

The Ducks’ Pac-12 cross country title was the program’s 10^th overall and first since 2014.

For her work that season, Lehman-Winters was the recipient of the 2018 Tom Heinonen Award as the USTFCCCA West Region Women’s Coach of the Year.

During the 2019 indoor season, Hull set school records in the mile (4:31.03) and 3,000 meters (8:53.91) before winning the NCAA title at 3,000 meters at the 2019 NCAA Indoor Championships. She continued to thrive during the outdoor season, winning the 1500 meters at the Pac-12 Championships and posting a then-PR of 4:06.27 in a runner-up showing at the NCAA Championships.

Later that summer, Hull recorded a time of 4:02.62 in a top-eight finish at the Prefontaine Classic.

Lehman-Winters also guided the Ducks to top-four finishes from Susan Ejore (fourth) at 800 meters and Cardama Baez (second) in the 10,000 meters at the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Championships in Austin, Texas.

Cardama Baez was a three-time NCAA indoor qualifier the following year and broke the school record in the indoor 5,000 meters with a 15:25.41 performance at the BU Season Opener. She surpassed the old mark by nearly 15 seconds and took almost 30 seconds off her lifetime best in the event.

At the 2021 NCAA Championships at Hayward Field, Cardama Baez capped her UO career with a national title at 10,000 meters. She did so in a personal-best time of 32:16.13, the second-fastest performance in school history. With her title, Cardama Baez became the second UO woman to win the NCAA 10K title and first to do so since Kathy Hayes in 1984.

Konieczek became the No. 11 performer in collegiate history in the steeplechase with a 9:34.37 in the semifinal round at the NCAA Championships. She went on to lower her lifetime best to 9:25.98 to win the Polish Championship and qualify for the Olympics.

Cardama Baez and Konieczek both won Pac-12 titles in their signature events. The win by Konieczek marked the first UO win in the event since 2010. She also set the meet record (9:36.74), surpassing the previous record by nearly 12 seconds.

During her successful run at USF, Lehman-Winters was an eight-time West Coast Conference (WCC) Coach of the Year in cross country and led the USF women to a runner-up performance at the 2017 NCAA Cross Country Championships and six WCC Championship titles.

In total, Lehman-Winters coached USF student-athletes to 52 All-WCC honors and 14 USTFCCCA All-America accolades including six during the 2017-18 campaign.

One of those All-America honors went to Charlotte Taylor who made history under Lehman-Winters’ guidance in winning the 10,000 meters at the 2017 NCAA Outdoor Championships to become the first female national champion in school history. The following year, Taylor recorded at fifth-place finish in the 10K at the NCAA meet.

Taylor, an England native, finished her collegiate career as a five-time All-American. She was also the 2017 USTFCCCA West Region and WCC Women’s Runner of the Year, and went on to finish third at that year’s NCAA Cross Country Championships. She was one of three cross country All-America performers for USF in 2017, joined by Pyzik (fifth) and Isabelle Brauer (15^th); both finished their careers at Oregon with Lehman-Winters.

San Francisco used a terrific 2016 cross country season as a stepping stone to its history 2017 campaign, with the women’s team earning a fourth NCAA appearance and finishing in a then-program best of sixth pace at the national meet. The previous best showing was 18^th in 2013.

In addition to reaching new heights in competition, the San Francisco programs thrived in the classroom under Lehman-Winters’ leadership. In 2017, seven members of the cross country teams earned WCC all-academic honors, and the women’s team had the third-highest GPA (3.82) in the country after leading the nation each of the previous two seasons and three times since 2014. Four women earned USTFCCCA academic all-America recognition in 2017.

Prior to her 15-year tenure at the helm at USF, Lehman-Winters spent three seasons as a volunteer coach for UCLA after 15 terrific seasons at the high school level where she built dominant teams as the head coach of cross country and track programs at El Cerrito High School (1985-89) and Carondelet High School in Concord (1989-2000).

At the prep level, Lehman-Winters guided her cross country teams to nine California State meet cross country berths, eight North Coast Section titles and 12 league titles.

On the track, Lehman-Winters' squads enjoyed even greater success, posting an unprecedented 109-1 league dual meet record while winning five North Coast Section titles. She coached 23 distance runners to the California state meet, nine of which earned top-four finishes. In 1996, she mentored Kristen Gordon to the Foot Locker Cross Country national title.

Lehman-Winters competed in cross country and track at UC Santa Barbara before graduating from University of California, Berkeley in 1987. She earned her master's degree in sport psychology from John F. Kennedy University in 1997. She and her husband, John, have three children, Miles, Mathias and Milana.