2024-2025: Cross Country – spent the season as a medical redshirt due to an running injury sustained early in summer training. 

2023-2024: Cross Country – has steadily improved since his arrival at ACU. Ran as the #2 ACU finisher in three meets: the Chile Pepper XC Festival in Fayetteville; placing 5th overall at the ACU Naimadu Classic with an 8K PR time of 24:50; and then, finishing 41st at the WAC Championship – an improvement of 45 places from 2022. Also ran a new 10K PR time of 32:48 in finishing 111th in the South Central Region meet. Indoors – placed 12th at the Charlie Thomas Invitational in College Station in the 5k with a indoor PR time of 15:08.36, but did not compete at the indoor WAC Championship. Outdoors – kicked off the outdoor season placing 3rd in ACU’s Wes Kittley Invitational in the 5K with a new PR of 14:56.34. Later in the year, he placed 3rd in the 10K at the Bobcat Invitational at Texas State with a new PR of 31:31.50, before finishing 13th in the WAC Championship 10K.

2022-2023: Cross Country – ran the Big Country XC Festival unattached planning to redshirt the season, but the redshirt was removed after that meet and Samuel ran in the remaining 5 XC meets for ACU – running in the top-7 finishers for ACU in all 5 races. Finished the season by placing 87th at the WAC Conference meet and 157th at the South Central Region Championship. Indoors – placed 6th in the TTU Red Raider Open 3K and 7th in the Pittsburg State Inv 5K, but did not compete in the WAC indoor championship. Outdoors – redshirted, but ran in 3 meets unattached, including a PR of 4:05.14 in the 1500 at the Oliver Jackson Twilight meet and a 5K PR of 15:12.02 at the J Fred Duckett Inv hosted by Rice University.

Before ACU: Running for Marshall County HS in Benton, KY, Samuel placed 22nd in the KY Region I-3A XC in the fall of 2020. On the track in the spring of 2022, he placed 4th in the 1600 and 8th in the 3200 at the KY Region 1-3A meet. At the KY state meet that same year, Samuel ran the 3rd leg on the winning Class 3A 4x800 relay. In 2022, he also received the Most Improved Athlete award at Marshall County HS.

Personal: Graduated from Marshall County HS in Benton, KY, in spring 2022. At ACU, he is a double major in Information Systems and Accounting at ACU. He was on the Dean’s List in the Fall, 2023 and Spring, 2024. At home in Kentucky, Samuel has been an active volunteer at his home church, the Benton Church of Christ. At ACU, he is an active volunteer at Simple Charity, ACU Chapter. His Mother is Kelly Mathis and his Father is James Lanham. Samuel has 2 brothers – Andrew and Isaac – and 1 sister – Ruth.