Two new Pilots are ready to captain the De La Salle Collegiate cross country program.   

On behalf of the De La Salle athletic department, DLS Athletic Director Dan Rohn has announced that Bryan Stewart and Andrew Campbell will pilot the program this fall.   

Stewart, who comes to De La Salle from Macomb L’Anse Creuse North High School, will assume the head coaching duties, while Campbell, DLS school psychologist, will take on the role of lead assistant. 

Stewart took over as head coach of the L’Anse Creuse North cross country program in 2017. During his time there, he guided the Crusaders to a Macomb County championship and two consecutive Macomb Area Conference White division second-place finishes (2020-21).  

He’s excited for the opportunity that lies ahead with the Purple and Gold.  

“I’m very excited and anxious to get started and to get the ball moving forward,” Stewart said. “I’m leaving a program at L’Anse Creuse North that I built up, and I’m looking forward to doing the same thing at De La Salle.”

He also served as an assistant track and field coach, specializing in distance running, while at L’Anse Creuse North. He helped lead the Crusaders’ girls track program to five Macomb Area Blue division championships, as well as LCN’s boys track squad to a MAC Blue division championship. All the while, he aided five runners in qualifying for the MHSAA state tournament (four of the state qualifiers also became all-state performers under his tutelage).  

Stewart intends on elevating the Pilots’ cross country program to the level of De La Salle’s high-achieving athletic programs, such as the school’s state championship-winning football and basketball teams and its state semifinalist hockey squad.     

“I want to get the cross country program on par with the rest of the athletic programs at De La Salle,” Stewart expressed. “I want to compete at the top of the Catholic League and finish toward the top in the county meet, and then eventually that will progress into competing for regional and state championships. I want to create the same winning culture that the rest of the athletic programs at DLS have.”

Stewart’s right-hand man for the 2022 season will be Campbell, who’s been a member of the school’s faculty and staff since 2018. Campbell, who also serves as an assistant on the Purple and Gold’s junior varsity golf coaching staff, brings his own impressive list of credentials to the job.

Among them, he started his own youth running program in North Carolina, specifically designed for middle school-aged boys before morphing into a program for both boys and girls, before making the move to Michigan. He also trained adults for half marathons and marathons.      

His work with the middle school program also included aiding boys and girls with their social and emotional health, which focused on physical fitness, healthy eating, as well as how to be a good teammate and a good classmate. 

Campbell hopes to focus on the same mental and physical health components for the runners at De La Salle while bridging the gap between the students’ performance inside the classroom and outside of it. 

“I want to be able to fold what I do in the school into a program, and not any single program but all programs,” Campbell said. “And, if I can work on something I can build and implement through the cross country team, maybe it’s something I can step in and put into a playbook for our football program, baseball program, you name it, that includes some of the sports psychology and the overall mental health component. Then, I want to take some of that and insert it into a classroom and try to connect it all. That’s really what I would love to be able to do.”  

Rohn is excited for the Stewart-Campbell duo to get started. 

“Campbell is vested and is a great asset for De La Salle, both inside and outside the school. He knows the kids, and knows the school like the back of his hand,” Rohn said. “Meanwhile, Bryan has trained a lot of runners through his time at L’Anse Creuse North and is very passionate about it. He understands the Macomb County tradition of cross country and should be a solid fit for our program. I can’t wait for the two of them to lead the way this fall.”