He helped commence the Lopes’ NCAA Track & Field program back in 2010, so it’s more than fitting that Todd Lehman would move over to GCU Club Sports in 2025 to help launch its T&F program as well as the inaugural head coach. The 15 years Lehman spent as the Lopes’ Associate Head Coach during their incredibly successful years in the Western Athletic Conference is just half of the three decades of coaching success that Lehman brings to the club sports level, and all but a few of those years have been spent in the Phoenix area.
Lehman’s 15 seasons on the Lopes’ NCAA level were highlighted by 14 WAC Indoor titles (eight on the men’s side (including this past spring), six for the women) and 10 WAC outdoor championships (six men’s, four women’s). Along the way, Lehman – whose main emphasis was working with pole vaulters and multi-event athletes – has coached 20 different WAC Pole Vault champions, including Scott Marshall, who earned six titles and a berth in both the NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Championships in 2018; and Madelyn Lundberg, who won 2nd Team All-American at the outdoor championships in 2021 – the first Lopes’ female to reach All-American status. In all, Lehman has helped coach six GCU student-athletes to spots at the NCAA Division 1 Championships as well as 15 NCAA All-Americans.
When Lehman arrived at GCU in 2010, he was already a decade into an extremely successful 14-year stint as T&F coach at Paradise Valley Community College in north Phoenix (the first four years as assistant, then promoted to co-head coach in 2004). From 1999 through 2013 (he coached at both GCU and PVCC for three years), Lehman coached 27 Pumas to win NJCAA National titles as well as break a dozen national two-year records. A whopping 62 NJCAA All-Americans and 33 NJCAA Academic All-Americans blossomed under Lehman’s tutelage. Lehman was named the National Collegiate Pole Vault Coach of the Year in 2004 and the 2005 Indoor Track and Field Assistant Coach of the Year, and he’s now a part of three Halls of Fame: Arizona Community College Athletic Conference (2017), Phoenix Union High School District (2022) and in 2025, as part of the 2012 Lopes’ T&F team that won NCAA Division II Indoor Championship, the GCU Athletics Hall of Fame.
Lehman’s first track and field prominence also happened in Arizona as a high school track champion at North High School. Lehman’s prowess led to a scholarship to none other than the University of Southern California, where was the Trojans’ co-captain in earning four letters there, earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education and Teaching, and eventually began his coaching career as a volunteer assistant. Lehman also coached two seasons each at the U.S. Air Force Academy and Indiana State University before moving back to the Grand Canyon State in 1998 to open the Kiss the Sky Pole Vault Center in Phoenix. The USA Track and Field Level II coach also runs pole vault camps in Northern Arizona every summer.
Lehman and his wife, Kate, recently celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary, and their lives continue to revolve around their four children, Lucas, Maxima, Ty and Reed.
