Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

Ryan and Lynn Ahlers have been a part of the City High cross country programs for the better part of the past decade.

Now the husband and wife combination will be leading a cross country team at City High and they will be doing it together.

The Ahlers accepted a shared head coaching position of the City High girls cross country team on Friday after each spending years as assistants.

“We knew that doing it together was important,” Lynn Ahlers said. “Having coached together before we realized that we definitely have the excitement individually but there is something special that we have working together.”

The duo takes over for Tom Mittman who stepped down last month after 20 years helping turning City High into one of the premier programs in the state.

Mittman led City High to 20 consecutive trips to the state meet, five state titles, eight runner-up performances and 15 top-three finishes.

City High won the Class 3A title in 1999 under Mittman and won 4A titles in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006.

“We are just humbled and honored to take over this position,” Ryan Ahlers said. “As coaches Lynn and I are both very confident in our abilities but we are certainly humbled and honored to take over a program that was coached very well and has a lot of administrative, community and family support.”

Ryan Ahlers spent seven seasons as an assistant coach with the City High boys cross country program and has been an assistant to Mittman the previous two seasons.

Lynn Ahlers joined the City High cross country program as an assistant in 2007.

“City High has a tradition of a healthy atmosphere for young women to learn about the sport,” Lynn Ahlers said. “Coach Mittman was a big part of that, he was a huge person in continuing that and we are wanting to carry that on.”
The Ahlers first coached together in 2014 as assistant coaches at Bozeman High in Bozeman, Montana.

Lynn was the full-time assistant coach of the school’s boys and girls track program and Ryan served as her volunteer assistant.

The couples’ first attempt at coaching together went so well they began talking about the possibility of continuing it.

When Mittman told the coaching staff of his plans to step away Ryan and Lynn said they applied, together, immediately.

We had always talked about training and how to approach kids in the sport but when we actually started working together on a daily basis I think what we figured out is that we complement each other well and we have very similar philosophies,” Ryan Ahlers said. “Between the two of us we have a wide variety of different coaches in our own lives we have taken things from all of our competitive experiences and figured out how to put that into coaching.”

City High returned to the top three at state for the first time since 2010 last season and return five of their top seven runners from that team this fall.

Ryan Ahlers said the program will have a wealth of experienced and talented assistant coaches this season.

“Knowing the girls individually is huge but most importantly I think is knowing how they tick as a team, knowing what makes them want to race together and do this for each other,” Ryan Ahlers said. “We value empowering young women to make good, positive choices not only in our program but in life as well.”
<!–[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]–>
<!–[endif]–>