Bailey Hughes was elevated to the head coach of the Women's Cross Country program in August of 2018 after a year serving as the assistant for both the men's and women's cross country and track and field programs. She will continue her role as an assistant with the track and field programs.
Hughes joined the coaching staff in 2017-18 after a successful career as a student-athlete for the Pack. In addition to her role as head coach of the women's cross country team, her responsibilities as an assistant are working with the distance athletes and as the director of operations for the team.
As a coach in 2017-18, the men's cross country/track and field programs finished fourth on the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association of America Best Program list. In the three seasons, the women's program totaled five national qualifiers and added two outdoor All-Americans last year.
As a student-athlete at CSU-Pueblo, she was a national qualifier four times and competed at two NCAA Cross Country National Championships and two NCAA Indoor National Championships. She finished her career with school records in the mile, 3,000 meter, and was a member of the school record DMR team. Hughes also holds the 10,000m outdoor school record. Hughes was named RMAC Runner of the Week several times and was all-conference for the RMAC twice for cross county and six times for track and field. She also gathered multiple academic honors, including CoSIDA Academic All-District.
Hughes attended Carroll College for one year and then transferred to CSU-Pueblo to complete her undergraduate and graduate degrees. As a freshman at Carroll, Hughes was an NAIA All-American in the mile indoors (5th), the DMR (8th), and the 1500 meters outdoor (7th).
She graduated with a bachelors in education and was also recognized as the Threlkeld Award of Excellence (top graduating senior at CSU-Pueblo) winner upon graduating. She completed her master's degree for instructional technology in education in December 2017.
