Arguably the most successful track and field coach in Wayland Baptist history, John Creer won a national-record four straight NAIA Men’s Indoor National Championships and two NAIA Women’s titles during his five years of coaching the Pioneers.  Creer’s teams also won eight national runner-up trophies, produced three male and one female NAIA Outstanding Performers, and earned him six NAIA Coach of the Year designations.
 
The former national and Olympic track and field coach for the Saudi Arabia Amateur Athletic Federation and assistant coach at both the University of Florida and Troy State University, Creer arrived on the Wayland campus in 1983 to take over as head cross country and track and field coach.  He inherited a men’s track program that had never finished higher than fourth at the national level, and a women’s program that was just in its third year of existence.
 
In his first year, Creer took the Pioneer men’s teams to best-ever finishes, capturing second at the 1984 NAIA Indoor Championships and ninth at the Outdoor Meet.
 
Creer’s second recruiting class set the standard for everything yet to come at Wayland.  Over the next four years, that group earned 20 individual national championships and 75 All-American honors on the men’s side and 15 individual national championships and 47 All-American designations for the Pioneer women. 
 
The 1985 Pioneer men’s team won the school’s first-ever track and field national title at the NAIA Indoor Championships, and was runner-up at the outdoor meet.   Those two events weren’t the only highlights of the year, however.  The team competed in the prestigious Drake Relays and made history by winning all six relay events, the only school to win all six relays in the same year, a distinction that was still held in 2009.  In addition, the times turned in by the 4x200 and 4x400 Pioneer relay teams remained Drake records. 
 
It took another year for the women to accomplish the successes of Creer’s men’s teams, but in 1986 the Pioneer women won the first of two national indoor titles for Creer, and the outdoor team took the first of three runner-up trophies.
 
Creer left Wayland in 1988 to become Athletic Director and head track coach at Missouri Baptist University.  He went on to win one more women’s and three more men’s national titles at MBU and at Lindenwood University.  Creer was named to the NAIA Hall of Fame as a coach in 2000.
 
The current Athletic Director at Lindenwood University, Creer and his wife, Liz, live in St. Charles, Mo.  They have two married daughters, Kimberly and Jennifer, and three grandsons.