Laurens TenKate
Calvin Christian High School
Impact Statement
TenKate leads the boys’s and girls’ cross country teams at Calvin Christian. He leads both on the track and off the track, as a competitor himself.
Biography
Coaching at a school with a total enrollment of 375 students, TenKate, who coaches the boys and girls cross country teams and the boys track and field team, led Calvin Christian to back-to-back Lower Peninsula boys state championships.
His 2009 boys team finished second in state. In winning their second straight Division 3 title, the Squires also cemented their place as the top team in Michigan. That came after Calvin Christian won the prestigious Spartan Invitational, held at Michigan State University. It was their fifth title in six regular-season invitationals, and they have won 19 of 22 invitationals the past three years. Calvin Christian was named the NHSCA Boys Small School National Team Champions by xcnation.com, which ranked the Squires fifth overall nationally.
A graduate of Calvin College with degrees in business administration and accounting, TenKate has qualified for the Boston Marathon five times. He served as the controller of the Greater Grand Rapids Home Builders Association and is the owner of Laurens TenKate Builders LLC, a custom homebuilding and remodeling company based in Wyoming, Mich. He coached the girls cross country team to an eighth-place state finish last fall and the boys track and field team to a fifth-place state finish last spring.
TenKate continues to lead Calvin Christian after being honored. In 2018, his girls’ team finished second in the state. Most recently, in the fall of 2019, his boys’ finished with a second place finish in the Division 3 Michigan State Championships.
Photos
