Olympic track medalist clears another hurdle: his MBA

by Susan Veshi

Born in Hollywood, Tonie Campbell likes to joke, “I was destined to become a star.” Though his family moved to Carson, California, shortly after, Campbell’s fate was sealed. But instead of stage and screen, Campbell made his name in track and field, as a three-time world champion and Olympic bronze medalist hurdler who enjoyed one of the longest careers in the sport’s history.

To those credentials, he can now add a Nichols College MBA, which he earned in August.

To say Campbell stumbled into hurdling would not be too far off. From an early age, he played football and baseball but wanted to take a year off from both when he reached high school. “My dad said, ‘We don’t quit in this family. Keep yourself busy. Sports is an important part of life. It teaches you sportsmanship, hard work, ethics, teamwork,’ and he told me to choose a sport,” says Campbell.

He chose track and, because of his lanky build, was asked if he could run hurdles. He recalls, “I thought back to my childhood, being bullied and chased home from school and thought, ‘I can jump over fences and bushes pretty fast, so a hurdle can’t be much different from that.’” But when Campbell learned he’d have to jump high hurdles as well as low ones, he balked. “Let’s just say that the team captain was a very persuasive guy in the neighborhood. He got in my face, called me a couple of expletives and gave me one seriously hard push,” he says. As Campbell tried to prevent himself from falling backward, he turned, only to encounter a hurdle. “I went over it. It was a high hurdle, and I cleared it. Oh, I can do this. It’s kind of fun…love at first flight.”

Campbell earned a full scholarship to the University of Southern California and made his first Olympic team in 1980 at age 19, one of the youngest on the team. It was unexpected for Campbell. “I thought that you needed to be mature enough and physically developed,” he says. “Luck shined on me, and I made it.”

A shadow fell, however, when the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to protest Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. Believing that politics and sports should not mix, Campbell joined a movement aimed at circumventing the boycott by

Tonie Campbell takes the bronze medal for 110-meter hurdles at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

“The things that I’ve learned from Nichols College have been and will continue to be applied in my administration as I move forward into the role of athletic director and dean...It’s all happening, and it’s all because of Nichols College.”