News

By Alex Freeman, MCC Communications Specialist

Nate Van Holten vividly remembers the moment he decided he wanted to be a coach, forever. 

Shortly after graduating from Cornerstone University with a bachelor’s degree in youth psychology, Van Holten, a coaching assistant for the CU track team, was assigned to work with a freshman steeplechaser named Derek Scott. Scott was a phenom in the making, finishing runner-up in the steeplechase national championship that year. He then qualified for the United States Junior Championships, where he also finished runner-up and then qualified for the World Junior Championship team, where he represented Team USA in Italy. 

“That whole process was so exciting that I was like, ‘I want to do this forever,’” said Van Holten, recalling his time coaching Scott. “I just wanted to help another kid try to accomplish this in their lifetime and that pretty much just kept me rolling through coaching.” 

Van Holten’s coaching career has now led him to Montcalm Community College, where he will take over as the head coach of the men’s and women’s cross country teams. After taking a two-year hiatus from coaching, with his last stint at Grand Valley State University, he’s ready to lead a program once again. 

“I love coaching, that’s probably my No. 1 thing,” Van Holten said. “Even though I haven’t been doing it for two years, I was coaching a few people on the side and that was going well. I just love that process of helping someone transform from what they are to what they will become. I miss that every day and I think my wife knows that probably all too well.” 

Van Holten is originally from Harbert — a small lakeside community in southwest, Michigan. He attended River Valley High School in Three Oaks, where he ran track, mostly as a sprinter, and ran cross country in his senior year. Upon graduation, Van Holten attended Cornerstone University but was unable to compete in his main sport of track, as CU did not yet have a track team. Van Holten ran cross country for Cornerstone as a freshman and jumped at the opportunity to join the school’s new track program in his sophomore year. 

Van Holten served in a head coaching role for the track and cross country programs at Cornerstone for about 15 years, leaving in 2019. From there, he went onto be an assistant coach at Grand Valley State University, where he attended graduate school and graduated with his master’s degree in social work. Van Holten coached at GVSU from 2020-2023 before taking his two-year hiatus, choosing to focus his time more on his family and his home business. 

MCC will offer new opportunities for Van Holten, who will have full control of administrative decisions surrounding the program for the first time in his coaching career. While he served as head coach while at Cornerstone, he had a director ahead of him who oversaw most administrative and operational matters. Additionally, this will be Van Holten’s first main experience coaching women, as he has primarily coached only men in the past; Van Holten served as the interim head coach for the women’s cross country team in his final year at Cornerstone. 

To start, Van Holten’s first main goal is to field a full men’s and women’s team, which has been a challenge for the MCC cross country program’s first two years. While he may not be able to recruit the caliber of athletes he would like to right away, he is hoping to set the tone and instill a culture of immediate improvement to help build the program up. 

“If you can get an athlete to make a big level of improvement and they have a good experience, they can tell other high school teammates that and you can get other kids interested in the program, as well,” Van Holten said. 

Van Holten is no stranger to getting his athletes to make leaps and bounds under his coaching. During his tenure at Cornerstone University, every male athlete who ran all four years and graduated went onto the NAIA National Championship in at least one discipline. It’s quite the accomplishment considering how long he was at Cornerstone and he had to get creative at times, taking lesser runners and turning them into race walkers, a specialty NAIA event. However, this gave many of those runners an opportunity to be in a unique position which they hadn’t been in before. 

“You’d have athletes who were never in a position to help their team as far as being a big points scorer at a national meet,” Van Holten said. “I got every one of those kids to nationals and then it would be, ‘I need you to be third and score our team six points at nationals.’ That’s a different mindset from being, ‘I’m just on the team and I kind of exist,’ to, ‘I’m a big contributor.’ To watch that process is cool and I think some of that can happen at MCC.” 

Van Holten was the 2009 and 2019 WHAC Men’s Cross Country Coach of the Year. He coached five individual national champions and had 15 individuals finish runner-up at the national meet. He helped coach 44 athletes to 126 All-American honors during his time at Cornerstone. 

Van Holten resides in Rockford with his wife, Jane, and his children, Logan and Olympia.