Merritt Suenram is entering into his fourth season as the Head Coach of the MACU Cross Country and Track & Field teams after the program was re-established before the 2023 season.
During the 2025-26 seasons, the Evangels continued to rise both on the course and on the track. During the cross country season, the men's team put together its best ever finish at the NCCAA National Championships, claiming a second place finish and garnering two All-Americans with Lucky Maila and Jaden Rodriguez finishing fifth and sixth in the race. It came just a week after MACU finished third in the Sooner Athletic Conference Championships, an event where the Evangels notched a record three All-SAC honorees with Maila, Rodriguez, and Jonathan Avila placing in the top 15. Due to their results in the SAC meet, Rodriguez and Maila both received a bid to run at the NAIA National Championships, making it the first time the Evangels had multiple runners receive bids to the national meet.
In the track & field seasons, the men's 4x800-meter relay team of Avila, Maila, Chase Cotarelo, and Collin Seely captured the program's first NCCAA Indoor National Championship after running the second-fastest time in program history. The 4x800-meter relay team with Blake Jensen replacing Avila also earned NCCAA All-America honors by placing third in the outdoor event just a few months later after setting the record a few weeks prior in the SAC Championships to garner All-SAC honors with its third place finish in that event. Cotarelo became MACU's first All-SAC honoree in two events with his third place time of 1:55.10 in the 800-meter, the second-fastest mark in MACU's record book.
The 2024-25 campaign was the first year that the men's program competed during the track & field season, participating primarily in distance events. Mohamed Zairi became the program's first All-SAC honoree after tallying a third-place finish in the 800-meter while both Zairi and Rodriguez garnered NCCAA All-America accolades after both runners finished in third in the 800-meter and 5000-meter events at the NCCAA National Championships.
The men's cross country team put together a strong result at the NCCAA National Championships, narrowly missing the podium after placing fourth of the 11 teams in the meet while also notching a fourth place finish at the SAC Championships the week before. Not only did Rodriguez become the program's first All-SAC honoree with an eighth-place finish in the SAC meet and NCCAA All-American in the NCCAA Nationals after finishing in sixth, but he became the first MACU cross country runner in program history to receive an invite to the NAIA National Championships.
The MACU Women's Cross Country team also put together its best ever finish in the SAC Championships after placing fifth as a team while Gracie Sanders became the program's first multiple All-SAC and NCCAA All-American recipient after placing third in both meets.
In his first season at the helm in 2023, the men's cross country program put together its most outstanding year in its existence as the Evangels captured a fourth place finish at the SAC Championships. The men's team also qualified for its first ever NCCAA National Championship race and put together a strong showing as the Evangels placed seventh out of 12 teams in the meet.
On the women's side, the Evangels placed sixth at the SAC Championships as a team while Sanders headlined the squad by earning not only the program's first All-SAC honor after placing 10th in the SAC Championship race, but also recorded the program's first NCCAA All-American honor after placing sixth at the NCCAA National Championships.
Before coming to MACU, Suenram previously served as a teacher at Newcastle Middle School and a youth minister at Council Road Baptist Church in Bethany, Oklahoma. At Newcastle, Suenram was the Head Coach of the boys' and girls' cross country teams and the Assistant Coach for the high school team in 2021.
In 2019, Suenram founded Elite Running, a program that coached, developed and mentored 22 athletes across Oklahoma, six of whom earned cross country collegiate scholarships.
As a cross country and track & field student-athlete, Suenram competed for Southern Nazarene, an NCAA Division II program in Bethany, Oklahoma, where he earned several Great American Conference academic awards while primarily competing in the 800-meter run and 4x400-meter relay.
Suenram graduated from Southern Nazarene in 2019 with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Physical Education.
