Born in Minneapolis, Luke Watson moved with his family to Stillwater when he was 5 years old. Playing hockey, baseball, and soccer provided him with an athletic background, but his parents decided they needed a family activity they could all do so they would not be shuttling their four children to various places at different times.
It led to cross country skiing and then Luke joined the junior high school cross country running team. “I was not immediately the best, but close to the front,” he says describing his first connection with the sport. From 1994-97 Luke went to the state meet with the team claiming championships three consecutive years. His junior year, Luke was runner-up to Nic Matick (Duluth East) and claimed the title his senior year. “Scott Christensen laid down the running environment. The 1997 season was magical because we won large invitationals and were ranked number one nationally.”
In track, he qualified for the state meet in 1996 in the 3,200-meter run won by Jeremy Polson (Duluth Denfield). Teammate Andy Tate, a runner Luke credits for giving him and the team a championship mentality, won the 1,600-meter run. A year later, Luke won both distance events and defended his crowns his senior year.
Choosing Notre Dame for its academic and athletic prowess, Luke continued his success at the collegiate level. He was 5th in the 2001 NCAA Cross Country Championships, and won the Meyo Mile in front of a raucous crowd and his parents in attendance with a “dream” time of 3:57.83, the 254th American to achieve a sub-4-minute mile (Ted Nelson of Faribault was the first Minnesota athlete–and 20th American–in 1966)–another “magical” time. Four years later, his brother Jake, joined the elite ranks as the 293rd American–also running for the Irish.
Cross country seemed to be Luke’s forte. “It favors runners who run out-of-rhythm with the grass, mud, wind, and terrain,” he says. Luke qualified for the World Championships multiple times, finishing as high as 36th out of 139 runners in Brussels, Belgium in 2004.
At the Olympic Trials in 2004, Luke qualified for the finals in the 5,000-meter run, finishing 14th. In 2008, he gamely finished the 3,000-meter steeplechase while suffering from a case of food poisoning. And in 2012, while winding down his running career, Luke finished 65th in the marathon with a time of 2:21:58, five seconds ahead of Northfield, Minnesota, native Chris Lundstrom.
Luke is married to Georganne, a Pennsylvania native who ran middle distances at the U of Kentucky and they have two children. Luke has three degrees in accounting: a bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Notre Dame and a Phd from Penn State. He has taught at the U of Florida, but will be joining the faculty at Villanova in August. The Watson family has returned to Georganne’s hometown, Lititz, Pennsylvania.
“There’s nothing I remember better than the relationships established with teammates and even opponents,” he says of the magical times.
Minnesota Athletes 