A familiar face returned to Liberty Mountain with Lance Bingham taking over as Liberty’s Director of Track & Field and Cross Country for the 2020-21 athletics year.

During his first five seasons at the helm, Bingham has coached the Flames to eight Conference USA and 12 ASUN Conference team titles between track & field and cross country. He has coached 20 All-Americans, including Liberty’s first relay team (2022 men’s 4 x 100) ever to garner All-America honors at the NCAA Division I level. The spring 2021 women’s cross country team became the first team in program history to reach the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships.

 

Specifically within the events Bingham oversees for the Flames (decathlon, heptathlon, pole vault and high jump), Katie Urbine finished 10^th in the women’s pole vault at the 2024 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships. That made her Liberty’s first women’s track & field athlete ever to become an NCAA Division I All-American during her freshman season.

 

Most recently, Meredith Engle placed 12^th in the pentathlon at the 2025 NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships, becoming the Lady Flames’ first All-American in that event. Liberty also placed 1-2-3-4 in both the 2025 CUSA indoor heptathlon and outdoor decathlon competitions.

Bingham has earned five CUSA Coach of the Year honors and 10 ASUN Coach of the Year awards during his time with the Flames.

After serving as head track & field and cross country coach for four seasons at Abilene Christian University (2016-20), Bingham returned home to Liberty where he previously served 18 seasons under head coach Brant Tolsma.

The Flames’ head coaching role is Bingham’s third stint at Liberty. He first joined the track & field staff as an assistant coach for six seasons from 1995-2001 and then served as associate head coach of the program for 12 more years from 2004-16.

During his time leading the cross country and track & field programs at Abilene Christian, Bingham coached 25 NCAA West Preliminary Round qualifiers, five cross country all-region honorees and four NCAA Championship participants.

To close out his tenure in Texas, Bingham guided Abilene Christian’s men’s and women’s programs to a pair of third-place finishes at the 2020 Southland Conference Indoor Track Championships.

The Wildcats’ men’s squad finished in third place at the 2019 and 2020 Southland Conference Indoor Track Championships, the program’s best finish since rejoining the league in 2013. The third-place performance for the women’s team in 2020 was the team’s second-best finish in the last seven years.

During the outdoor championships, Bingham guided the men’s squad to back-to-back Southland runner-up performances in 2018 and 2019.

In cross country, Abilene Christian captured the Southland women’s team title in 2017 and sent a pair of women’s runners to that year’s NCAA national meet.

While serving as Liberty’s associate head coach during the 2004-16 seasons, Bingham helped guide Liberty men’s and women’s track & field teams to a combined 33 conference titles. Bingham has been a part of the Liberty coaching staff for all three IC4A championship seasons (1996, 2007 & 2008) in program history.

In 2009-10, Bingham helped Liberty become only the ninth school in NCAA Division I history to complete a conference “Double Triple.” The Flames captured Big South titles in men’s cross country, indoor track & field and outdoor track & field, in addition to women’s cross country, indoor track & field and outdoor track & field.

During his last time at Liberty, Bingham’s coaching responsibilities included the hurdles, pole vault and multi events. During eight of his 12 seasons, Bingham helped Liberty send at least one athlete to the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

In 2012, Bingham coached Kolby Shepherd (pole vault) to a tie for fifth place and All-America honors at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Shepherd arrived at Liberty with just a 14-0 high school pole vault personal best.

Off the track, Bingham accompanied Liberty student-athletes on a number of foreign missions trips. During the summers of 2009, 2012 and 2015, he and his wife, Kelly, were part of the Liberty track & field group which traveled to Kenya.

Three of Bingham’s charges (Jon Hart, Clendon Henderson and Brandon Hoskins) qualified for the 2008 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Additionally, Henderson took part in the U.S. Olympic Trials that year.

As a result, Bingham was duly recognized as the 2008 U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Southeast Regional Men’s Assistant Coach of the Year.

During his first time away from Liberty, Bingham spent three years (2001-04) as the head coach at South Plains Junior College in Levelland, Texas, where he was named the 2004 National Junior College Outdoor Coach of the Year.

At South Plains Junior College, Bingham’s athletes won 13 individual national championships and earned 33 All-America honors in track and cross country, while the 2002 women’s marathon squad won the national championship. On two separate occasions, his men’s teams earned a third-place finish at the national championship meet.

Prior to his tenure at South Plains, Bingham served as an assistant coach at Liberty for six seasons (1995-2001), where he was primarily responsible for assisting with multi-event athletes and field events. During his first stint as an assistant coach for the Flames, he coached seven Division I All-Americans.

During his competitive days, Bingham was an All-American decathlete at South Plains Junior College, finishing second at nationals in both 1982 and 1983, when he posted a personal-best score of 7,510 points. He went on to compete at Texas Tech, where he also played football.

In 2016, Bingham was inducted into the NJCAA Coaches Association Hall of Fame, honoring his many accomplishments as both a coach and former student-athlete at the junior college level.

Bingham graduated cum laude from Texas Tech in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education and earned his masters of education from Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.

Bingham and his wife of more than 30 years, Kelly, have two children: Brittany Werth and Cody. Kelly currently serves as an online professor at Liberty, teaching graduate level education classes.

Brittany is a former Liberty heptathlete (2009-10), who now serves as a missionary. Cody is a former Liberty decathlete (2011-15), who was part of the track & field coaching staff at Abilene Christian with his father for two years and is now a full-time pastor.

SINGAPORE (AP) — Open water swimming at the World Championships is set to start a day late following two delays in Singapore because of “water quality levels exceeding acceptable thresholds.”

World Aquatics and locals organizers issued a statement Wednesday saying the women’s and men’s 10-kilometer events would start in the afternoon.

Organizers said analysis of water quality samples collected late Tuesday met standards for the competition to begin.

The men’s 10-kilometer event is set to start as scheduled Wednesday at 1 p.m. local time (0500 GMT). The women’s 10-kilometer event, which was to have opened the program Tuesday and then initially rescheduled for Wednesday morning, will follow men’s race.

Other open water events are scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Local organizers said three samples taken along the competition course at Sentosa, near the Singapore Strait, at 5 p.m. local time (0900 GMT) Tuesday showed “significant improvement, with levels of E. coli falling between the ranges of ‘good’ to ‘excellent’ according to World Aquatics regulations.”

Open water swimming was an issue in last year’s Olympics in Paris with concerns about water quality in the Seine River. It was also an issue at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Water polo competition at the worlds is underway at an indoor venue.

The main event of the championships is eight days of swimming competition in the pool, which opens on July 27.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports

Hours before the event was due to begin on Tuesday, it was announced that the race would be postponed as water quality levels failed to meet “acceptable thresholds”, organisers said.

In a press release in the early hours of Tuesday, World Aquatics announced that the decision was made in the “utmost interest of athlete safety”.

The race, which was planned for 8am on Tuesday, is now scheduled for 10.15am on Wednesday. Singapore Olympian Chantal Liew and youngster Kate Ona were scheduled to compete in the race.

The decision followed a review involving representatives from World Aquatics, the Singapore 2025 Organising Committee, the World Aquatics Sports Medicine Committee and the World Aquatics Open Water Swimming Technical Committee, said World Aquatics.

“While testing in recent days has consistently shown water quality at the venue to meet World Aquatics’ acceptable thresholds, analysis of samples taken on Jul 13 surpassed these thresholds,” said the sport’s governing body in a press release.

“The decision to postpone racing was made in the best interests of athlete health and safety, which remains World Aquatics and the Singapore 2025 Organising Committee’s top priority.”

National head coach Gary Tan said he and his athletes were informed of the postponement at about 11.45pm on Monday.

“Our team promptly communicated the update to the affected athletes and worked with them on next steps,” he said.

Mr Tan, who is also the performance director of swimming at Singapore Aquatics, said postponements were not uncommon in international open water swimming competitions.

“Our athletes are well accustomed to managing such changes. They remain in good spirits, and while the race will now take place at a later time slot, they have trained under similar conditions and are well prepared to adapt.”

At last year’s Paris Olympics, pollution in the Seine after heavy rains caused the men’s triathlon race to be postponed for a day, after swimming practice sessions were cancelled two days in a row.

There are plans in place should contamination levels continue to exceed acceptable standards, said Mr Nowicki.

“We have a variety of different options that we can use in so far as locations that we’ll look at. It could be in Sentosa, it could not be in Sentosa. It’s not something that we’re planning right now,” he added.

“So it’s bit premature to talk about alternative sites on or off Sentosa.”

The men’s and women’s 10km open water swimming events at the World Aquatics Championships will finally get under way on Wednesday after multiple delays owing to unacceptable levels of E coli bacteria in Singapore’s seas.

Initially scheduled for Tuesday, the women’s 10km was called off hours before the expected start after water samples drawn at the race site off Sentosa island, on the southern coast of the city state, showed “exceeding levels” of the Escherichia coli (E coli) bacteria.

The race was then moved to Wednesday morning, hours after the scheduled start of the men’s race, but both were delayed again late on Tuesday after the water quality levels exceeded the “acceptable thresholds outlined in the World Aquatics competition regulation”.

On Wednesday, World Aquatics and the Singapore 2025 Organising Committee said races could proceed at 1pm for the men’s 10km race and 4pm for the women’s.

Water samples showed a significant improvement, organisers said, with levels of E coli falling between the ranges of “good” to “excellent” according to World Aquatics and the World Health Organization (WHO) regulations.

They added that the regular water quality monitoring and testing would continue throughout the competition period.