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MADISON – Nearly 4,000 miles away from Madison, Mick Byrne crossed something off his bucket list before his 18th season with Wisconsin track and field – and came to an important realization.
The longtime UW director of cross country and track and field finally made it to Anfield, the home of his beloved Premier League soccer club Liverpool, for a match against Newcastle United.
The trip – about eight weeks after a surgery that he had to schedule around cross country and track and field seasons – was with family, friends, assistant coach Kareem Jackson who is “very much part of my family” and several former athletes.
Some were Liverpool fans. Some weren’t. They were all Mick Byrne fans.
“I had a blast,” Byrne said in a phone call with the Journal Sentinel. “It was kind of an eye-opener for me that, ‘Hey, at 70 years of age, you can have fun, and you got all this family, all these friends that want to be part of your life.’”
Now, Byrne is concluding an illustrious coaching career, which included leading UW men’s cross country since 2008 and full oversight of the Badgers' cross country and track and field programs since 2013.
He is the winningest coach in Big Ten men’s cross country history with 14 conference titles, and he led UW to a 2011 men’s cross country national championship. Byrne’s teams also won 14 individual national titles, 18 Big Ten team titles and 95 Big Ten individual titles. That’s in addition to 121 first-team All-America honors and seven Olympians.
“Winning Big Ten titles was always fun,” Byrne said. “It never got old. Every single one of them is special, and I enjoy that.”
That was all after he led Iona men’s cross country to 17 consecutive Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championships.
When UW announced Byrne’s retirement in April, interim athletic director Marcus Sedberry said that Byrne’s influence “will be felt for generations through the student-athletes he mentored and the foundation he built.”
After Byrne saw athletes or coaches who “try to hang on to it forever,” even his retirement can be interpreted as another coaching lesson.
“It’s a great example for our athletes that, at some point, you have to move on to the next chapter of life and find your next passion,” Byrne said.
Byrne hopes people take away from his 18 years that “we came to work every day, rolled up our sleeves and got after it” without any shortcuts.
“And had fun doing it,” Byrne said. “Because that’s the most important part. … It doesn’t have to be all this uptight, intense crap. We had a lot of fun with our fans. We enjoyed them. They were very, very supportive of me and my programs and what we were doing. They were as much part of it as the athletes.”
The emphasis on fun is no surprise for the former classroom teacher who thought it was important to never raise his voice. The now-retiring coach also believes that the “minute you don’t have fun is the minute you have to stop.”
The trip to Liverpool was just one of the moments where the time felt right to retire.
Another was in February following the Big Ten indoor championships. After a Tuesday morning bus departure from Madison, several days in Indianapolis and a late-night bus ride back on that Saturday, it hit him again.
“I always enjoy the day after a big major championship, just to sit on the couch and do nothing,” Byrne said. “And reflecting on the week, I was like, ‘OK, it’s time for me to move on. These long trips like that are just taking too much out of my body. … Hey, it’s time for me to pass the baton.’”
There are the smaller things, too, like always needing to have his phone nearby to see results, look for the next recruit or whatever other task. Earlier this month, he was at a Brewers game with a friend and missed a three-run home run because he was on his phone.
Of course, there will be moments that he will inevitably miss as he moves on from coaching and embraces time with family, including his two grandchildren in New York.
“I’ll miss the coaching part from 2:30 in the afternoon to whatever, 5, 6:00, and sitting down and talking track and talking training with my athletes,” Byrne said.
Add high-level competitions such as the NCAA outdoor championships in Eugene, Oregon – from June 10-13 and the last competition on the calendar in Byrne’s last season – to that list.
“You know when you walk into that stadium that this is a special place, that this is a special championship, and you feel the energy of the kids,” Byrne said. “You feed off that. I’ll always miss that. … You’re there with your best people, and your best people always put their best foot forward.”
Now that Byrne’s 18-year tenure at UW is actually coming to a close, it’s “a little surreal.”
“Spent a lot of time here in Madison,” Byrne said. “It’s been a fun ride, but now it’s time to pass the baton. And I’m excited to move on to the next chapter of my life and have some more fun.”
Byrne is passing that baton to a successor with an impressive resume – Chris Solinsky.
Solinsky, a Badger Hall of Famer, won five NCAA titles during his accolade-filled running career. The Stevens Point native then held coaching roles at William & Mary, Florida and Oregon before returning to his alma mater as executive director of the W Club.
Byrne departs with somewhat of a forewarning for an athletic department accustomed to a high level of success from his teams. Staying competitive, he firmly believes, “requires a lot more today than it did when I started in 2008.”
“We have to decide as an organization, as an athletic department, if we want to play ball in that playground,” Byrne said. “NIL is real in our sport. The transfer portal is real. Revenue share is real. It’s not just in football, and a lot of people don’t know that.”
As Solinsky navigates around a football-centric college athletics landscape in 2026-27 and beyond, Byrne may be navigating around a different type of football competition after having so much fun on his last British trip.
“I’d love to go to three or four of the stadiums in London,” Byrne said, “even though I’m a Liverpool fan.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mick Byrne reflects on Wisconsin coaching tenure, Badgers' future
Continue reading...
The longtime UW director of cross country and track and field finally made it to Anfield, the home of his beloved Premier League soccer club Liverpool, for a match against Newcastle United.
The trip – about eight weeks after a surgery that he had to schedule around cross country and track and field seasons – was with family, friends, assistant coach Kareem Jackson who is “very much part of my family” and several former athletes.
Some were Liverpool fans. Some weren’t. They were all Mick Byrne fans.
“I had a blast,” Byrne said in a phone call with the Journal Sentinel. “It was kind of an eye-opener for me that, ‘Hey, at 70 years of age, you can have fun, and you got all this family, all these friends that want to be part of your life.’”
Now, Byrne is concluding an illustrious coaching career, which included leading UW men’s cross country since 2008 and full oversight of the Badgers' cross country and track and field programs since 2013.
He is the winningest coach in Big Ten men’s cross country history with 14 conference titles, and he led UW to a 2011 men’s cross country national championship. Byrne’s teams also won 14 individual national titles, 18 Big Ten team titles and 95 Big Ten individual titles. That’s in addition to 121 first-team All-America honors and seven Olympians.
“Winning Big Ten titles was always fun,” Byrne said. “It never got old. Every single one of them is special, and I enjoy that.”
That was all after he led Iona men’s cross country to 17 consecutive Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championships.
When UW announced Byrne’s retirement in April, interim athletic director Marcus Sedberry said that Byrne’s influence “will be felt for generations through the student-athletes he mentored and the foundation he built.”
After Byrne saw athletes or coaches who “try to hang on to it forever,” even his retirement can be interpreted as another coaching lesson.
“It’s a great example for our athletes that, at some point, you have to move on to the next chapter of life and find your next passion,” Byrne said.
Byrne hopes people take away from his 18 years that “we came to work every day, rolled up our sleeves and got after it” without any shortcuts.
“And had fun doing it,” Byrne said. “Because that’s the most important part. … It doesn’t have to be all this uptight, intense crap. We had a lot of fun with our fans. We enjoyed them. They were very, very supportive of me and my programs and what we were doing. They were as much part of it as the athletes.”
The emphasis on fun is no surprise for the former classroom teacher who thought it was important to never raise his voice. The now-retiring coach also believes that the “minute you don’t have fun is the minute you have to stop.”
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The trip to Liverpool was just one of the moments where the time felt right to retire.
Another was in February following the Big Ten indoor championships. After a Tuesday morning bus departure from Madison, several days in Indianapolis and a late-night bus ride back on that Saturday, it hit him again.
“I always enjoy the day after a big major championship, just to sit on the couch and do nothing,” Byrne said. “And reflecting on the week, I was like, ‘OK, it’s time for me to move on. These long trips like that are just taking too much out of my body. … Hey, it’s time for me to pass the baton.’”
There are the smaller things, too, like always needing to have his phone nearby to see results, look for the next recruit or whatever other task. Earlier this month, he was at a Brewers game with a friend and missed a three-run home run because he was on his phone.
Of course, there will be moments that he will inevitably miss as he moves on from coaching and embraces time with family, including his two grandchildren in New York.
“I’ll miss the coaching part from 2:30 in the afternoon to whatever, 5, 6:00, and sitting down and talking track and talking training with my athletes,” Byrne said.
Add high-level competitions such as the NCAA outdoor championships in Eugene, Oregon – from June 10-13 and the last competition on the calendar in Byrne’s last season – to that list.
“You know when you walk into that stadium that this is a special place, that this is a special championship, and you feel the energy of the kids,” Byrne said. “You feed off that. I’ll always miss that. … You’re there with your best people, and your best people always put their best foot forward.”
Now that Byrne’s 18-year tenure at UW is actually coming to a close, it’s “a little surreal.”
“Spent a lot of time here in Madison,” Byrne said. “It’s been a fun ride, but now it’s time to pass the baton. And I’m excited to move on to the next chapter of my life and have some more fun.”
Byrne is passing that baton to a successor with an impressive resume – Chris Solinsky.
Solinsky, a Badger Hall of Famer, won five NCAA titles during his accolade-filled running career. The Stevens Point native then held coaching roles at William & Mary, Florida and Oregon before returning to his alma mater as executive director of the W Club.
Byrne departs with somewhat of a forewarning for an athletic department accustomed to a high level of success from his teams. Staying competitive, he firmly believes, “requires a lot more today than it did when I started in 2008.”
“We have to decide as an organization, as an athletic department, if we want to play ball in that playground,” Byrne said. “NIL is real in our sport. The transfer portal is real. Revenue share is real. It’s not just in football, and a lot of people don’t know that.”
As Solinsky navigates around a football-centric college athletics landscape in 2026-27 and beyond, Byrne may be navigating around a different type of football competition after having so much fun on his last British trip.
“I’d love to go to three or four of the stadiums in London,” Byrne said, “even though I’m a Liverpool fan.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mick Byrne reflects on Wisconsin coaching tenure, Badgers' future
Continue reading...
