Rise with Angels: Coach Laura Caldwell

It is with extreme sadness that we lost Laura Caldwell yesterday (9.20.22) as she succumed to complications resulting from her brain aneurysm rupture on June 7. After many weeks in Greenville Memorial Hospital and a couple of weeks in a rehab center, she came home to her family on September 7th. However, she later experienced severe seizures and a high fever, which caused her to become unresponsive. She passed peacefully on Tuesday just after noon. 

Laura will be fondly remembered as a best friend, nurturing mother, big sister, athlete, coach, mentor and environmentalist. 

After graduating from Florida State with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree, Laura excelled as a professional distance runner, winning the Racing South road racing Grand Prix series four times, the Dallas Grand Prix, qualifying for the US Olympic Marathon Trials twice, and winning US National Masters championships at both 5,000m and the Half Marathon. She competed as a NIKE sponsored athlete.

Among her many accomplishments, she placed among the top ten at Atlanta’s famous Peachtree Road Race three times (including a runner-up and one third place finish), placed 8th in the 1987 USA Women's Marathon championships, won the 1992 Seattle Marathon, won USA Masters 5,000 championship on the track and was the '93 USA Masters Cross Country champion. She also earned three silver medals at the World Masters Games in 1997 (1500m and 5000m on the track and over 8K cross country). She competed for the Bowerman Athletic Club, which won the USA National Masters XC Championship. Laura demonstrated tremendous range in competing at a very high level from 800 meters (former school record at Florida State) up to the marathon. One of the highlights of her career was running 1:15:52 for the half-marathon at age 43. 

Laura's coaching career began in Tallahassee, FL at her alma mater Florida State University and included stints at Florida High School, Lake Oswego High School in Oregon and Furman University in Greenville, SC. Her coaching success continued at the post-collegiate level with ASICS GTC-ELITE. The women finished 8th at the 2015 USA Club Cross Country Championships, in their first year competing as a team, placing two among the top 27. Then, in early 2016, two of the women she coached (Dylan Hassett and Nicole DiMercurio) ran under the standard of 1:15:00 in the Jax Bank Half Marathon to qualify for the 2016 USA Olympic Team Marathon Trails in Los Angeles. She then developed Cristina McKnight, who qualified for the 2020 USA Olympic Team Marathon Trials in her debut attempt at the distance and then ran 2:40:29 at those Trials in Atlanta. Annie Rodenfels, qualified for the 2021 USA Olympic Trials in the 3000m Steeplechase (9:46.98) and improved her track 1500m time by 10 seconds to 4:13.49, her 5,000m time from 16:35 to 15:35 and also set the South Carolina State Road 5K record of 16:09. 

Also a successful administrator, Laura was co-founder and board member of Greenville ELITE Track Club (ASICS GTC-ELITE). She was previously selected as a team manager and accompanied the USA women's Ekiden Relay team that competed in Bejing, China in 1993. She was also a founding member and the first president of Team Athena, a women's running club in Portland, and was the publisher and editor of Racing South Magazine in the 1980s before it was acquired by Running Journal. She was most recently a board member and webmaster for the Women's Running Coaches Collective whose mission is to support, unite, inform, inspire, encourage, and empower women coaches at all levels of our sport. She was an active member of the 50-year-old Greenville Track Club. 

ASICS Greenville Track Club-ELITE was established in 2012. The program produced four qualifiers for the 2016 USA Olympic Trials Marathon in Los Angeles, one qualifier/participant for the 2019 Pam American Games Marathon in. Lima, Peru, three qualifiers/two participants for the 2020 USA Olympic Trials Marathon in Atlanta, GA and one qualifier and participant in the 2021 USATF Olympic Track & Field Trials in the 3000m Steeplechase. The program's runners set four South Carolina State road race records in 2020 (5K, 15K and Half Marathon--twice) and three (15K, 10-Mile and 20K) in 2021. ASICS GTC-ELITE also produced the South Carolina Men's 2020 Long Distance Runner of the Year. 

​The post-collegiate, Olympic development program is sponsored by ASICS, the 50-year-old Greenville Track Club, Joy Real Estate (Adopt an Athlete partner), The Borch Foundation, generous individual contributors and partnerships with Performance Therapy, Carolina Spine and Rehab, Roll Recovery products, FinalSurge (on-line training log), ElliptiGO, NormaTec Recovery Boots, Cocoa Elite recovery products, Stryd Running, Coach Bob Williams Pace Calculator, the DorsiFlex (stretching device), the MOBO board (balance & mobility), On Pace Wellness (nutrition coaching) and LEVER Movement (treadmill body weight support). The club is a proud and active member of both the Road Runners Club of America and USATF.​