Julio Piazza Position: Head Coach Experience: 22nd season Alma Mater: Penn '72

Contact Coach Piazza:
- Email: piazzaj@lafayette.edu
- Office: (610) 330-5481

Julio Piazza enters his 23rd season as head coach of Lafayette's cross country and track and field teams. His successes have been numerous and his most recent accolade came in 2006, when he earned his third Outdoor Women's Patriot League Coach of the Year after leading the women to an outdoors third-place finish. He also won back-to-back Men's Coach of the Year honors in 2002 and 2003. He was named Patriot League Men's Indoor and Outdoor Coach of the Year for the 1996-1997 season after the Leopards captured 17 individual men's and women's conference championships.

Piazza was honored as the Patriot League Women's Track and Field Coach of the Year in both 1991 and 1996, as well as the Women's Cross Country Coach of the Year in 1993 after the Leopards claimed their first conference title. Piazza also led Lafayette's women's track and field teams to the East Coast Conference Indoor and Outdoor Championship crowns from 1986-88.

Prior to coming to College Hill, Piazza served as assistant coach for cross country and track and field at the University of Pennsylvania. He helped guide the Quakers to five Ivy League track and field crowns, and back-to-back Heptagonal Outdoor titles. Penn's women's cross-country team also reached the NCAA's in 1981.

An eight-time All-Ivy middle distance runner, Piazza graduated from Penn in 1972 and still holds two relay records. He and his wife, Cheryl, reside in Bethlehem, Pa. with their two children, Matt and Katie.