Linn-Mar, 2024 IATC Hall of Fame Athlete
As we go through life and find some time to reflect on the past, I think most of us would be able to identify a period where we would say, ‘You know what, all things considered, that was a pretty darn good time in my life”.
I have a feeling that if I asked the question, “Did anyone in this room, have special memories of a particular year” Josh Evans just might be the first to raise his hand and say 2014.
As a young 7th grader whose favorite part of junior high football was the warm up lap to start practice, little did he know that running would become a very rewarding way of life.
After helping lead the Linn-Mar track and field team to the state title as a junior in 2013….Evans’ senior year will go down as one of the best ever for an Iowa high school student athlete and his times are still very relevant, as we see sub fifteen minute 5K’s and sub nine minute 3200’s becoming less and less of a surprise. In the fall of 2013, he ran 15:19 to win the state Cross Country title by more than 10 seconds. At the 2014 Drake Relays he won the 1600 and anchored Linn-Mar’s Medley to a win while setting new Drake records in both, and he was 2nd in the 3200 and 4×8 where the top 3 in both were under what was the meet record.
Just a month later, at the state meet, he won 4 events, setting new 4A records in the 1600, 3200 and Medley and missed the 800 record by 1/100th of a second.
Going on 11 years since graduating, his PR’s of 1:50.98 in the 800, 4:06.32 for 1600, 3:24.39 in the Medley and 4:04.38 in the Mile remain in the Top 5 on Iowa’s All-Time lists and his 9:00.97 for 3200 sits at #12.
After his record setting high school career, he started his collegiate career at Iowa State and after 2 years in Ames, transferred to Division 2 powerhouse Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. It was a great fit. He qualified to the national championships 5 times and earned 1st team All American honors in the DMR and 1500 meters.
Josh is now a part of Team Run Ablaze and continues to live the life of a runner…he does very well in road races and even set a new lifetime best of 3:47.96 in the 1500 on the track in 2023.
Josh and his wife Kayla live in Ankeny. He is a process engineer at Chevron in Ames and a volunteer Cross Country and Track coach at Ankeny where Ethan Zuber seems to be doing quite well under Coach Evans’ tutelage.