Kuzara is in his fourth season as the Johnnies' head cross country coach in 2026. He replaced Tim Miles ’76, who announced his retirement following 44 seasons, in 2023 after serving as his assistant coach for three years. Kuzara is also an assistant coach for the Johnnies’ track and field team.
The Johnnie cross country team finished fourth out of 11 teams at the MIAC Championship and 13th out of 31 teams at the NCAA Regional this fall. Junior Cole Stencel (Mapleton, Minn./Maple River) led SJU in all six varsity races in 2025, including a fourth-place finish with a personal-best time of 25:26 to earn All-MIAC recognition (top 15) at the conference meet in November.
Stencel achieved his first All-Region honor (top 35 individually) with a 23rd-place finish (25:31). He received an at-large selection to the NCAA Division III Championships where he finished 148th out of 291 runners. He became the first Johnnie since 2015-16 to qualify for the NCAA Championship in cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor in the same academic year. Stencel was crowned an indoor All-American with an eighth-place time in the mile in March and 16th to earn second-team All-American honors in the 1,500 meters in May.
Kuzara returned to SJU as a track assistant coach in January 2021, joined the cross country program that fall and also served as a resident director at Saint John’s Preparatory School. Over the past academic year, Kuzara spearheaded an increase in enrollment for club sports, namely Nordic skiing and trapshooting.
Kuzara earned his bachelor's degree in global business leadership from SJU in 2017 and was an assistant coach at Minnetonka High School, his alma mater, for four years before returning to Collegeville. While coaching at Minnetonka, he also worked for three years in the endurance event world, organizing and putting on road races and mountain bike events all over the United States, including the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon and Life Time Miami (Fla.) Marathon.
A native of Excelsior, Minn., Kuzara achieved All-MIAC honors with a third-place finish in the 10,000 meters at the 2016 MIAC Outdoor Track and Field Championships and again five months later by taking eighth as a senior at the 2016 MIAC Cross Country Championship. He just missed All-MIAC honors (top three) with a fourth-place time in the 10,000 meters at the 2017 MIAC outdoor meet. The Johnnie cross country team placed second his junior and senior seasons (2015 and 2016).
