USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame Class of 2021

PETER FARRELL

PRINCETON The collegiate ranks called Farrell to Princeton on September 1, 1977. His first recruit was Lynn Jennings, who would eventually become the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in a distance event on the track, among other feats. From there, the Tigers ascended to great heights over the next 39 years until his retirement following the 2016 outdoor track & field season.

Princeton got off to a hot start with Farrell at the helm, winning 11 Ivy League titles in his first six years on campus. That included a Triple Crown during the 1980-81 academic year, where the Tigers captured Heps titles in cross country, indoor track & field and outdoor track & field. Princeton replicated the feat exactly 30 years later, starting with the 2010 cross country title. Princeton won 11 team titles between 2006 and 2016, with 10 coming in the first five years of that span.

The Tigers were especially strong in cross country, where they reeled off five Heps titles in a row from the midto-late 2000s. No team came together better than the 2009 edition, as they became the first – and still, only – squad in Ivy League history to sweep the conference meet.

With one individual national champion in track & field (Julia Ratcliffe, 2014 hammer), 55 total AllAmericans, four Mid-Atlantic Region cross country titles and two top-5 finishes at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, you can’t overlook what Farrell’s Tigers accomplished on the regional and national stage under his direction, either.

THOMAS “T.E.” JONES

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN He, along with Amos Alonzo Stagg and John L. Griffith helped organize the first NCAA championship in any sport, the 1921 National Collegiate Track & Field Championships.

Jones was the athletic director and head cross country and track & field coach at the University of Wisconsin, positions he held for 35 years until his retirement at age 70.

From 1910 to 1912, Jones led Missouri to a number of accomplishments. His teams won three Missouri Valley Conference titles in track & field and captured the Western Conference title in 1911.

He returned to Madison to much fanfare in 1913 and developed UW into a powerhouse in cross country and track & field over the next 35 years. The Badgers won 14 conference titles and posted a 70-18 record in dual meets. That doesn’t even include a pair top-3 finishes at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, which was still in its infancy at the time. UW actually took runner-up honors at the second-ever installment of the meet in 1939 thanks to an individual title from Walter Mehl, who finished second the previous year.

Success carried over into track & field, where the Badgers amassed numerous team titles, 137 total individual titles between the indoor and outdoor seasons (five at the NCAA Outdoor Championships), a 123-47 record in dual meets and an undefeated record in indoor triangular competition with Jones at the helm. Jones also coached Arlie Mucks, a 1912 Olympian in the discus, to the indoor shot put world record in 1916.

DON LARSON

NORTH DAKOTA STATE After graduating from SDSU in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education and then earning a master’s degree in the same area of expertise from Minnesota State-Moorhead, Larson began his coaching career at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Just a few years later in 1979, took the head coaching job at North Dakota State. And it is in Fargo, where Larson spent the next 41 years molding the Bison into a perennial force until his well-deserved retirement following the 2019-20 academic year.

For the first 25 years of Larson’s tenure, the Bison left their mark as NCAA Division II members in the North Central Conference. NDSU won 36 conference titles as a team between 1979 and 2004, including 35 in track & field alone. That one cross country title came in 1982 and it was the first link in a chain that resulted in capturing the vaunted Triple Crown.

Triumphs at the national level were just as commonplace for the Bison. Curt Bacon gave Larson his first individual champ in 1980 when he won the steeplechase crown and before all was said and done, his athletes added 10 more to that total at the NCAA DII level. Larson’s athletes also compiled 206 All-America honors with 193 of those coming in track & field. NDSU’s best finishes, as a team, were third outdoors in 2004 and fourth indoors in 1989.

Success continued after the Bison made the full transition to the Summit League in NCAA DI.

NDSU won 18 more conference titles between 2007 and 2020, including the 2020 indoor crown to send Larson out as a winner. The Bison dominated the proceedings, too, sweeping the top-4 spots in the 800, the top-6 spots in the shot put and the top-3 spots in the weight throw as Larson was named the conference’s Coach of the Year for the 17th time.

Payton Otterdahl gave NDSU its first individual champion at the NCAA DI level in any sport in 2019 when he won the shot put at the NCAA Indoor Championships. Otterdahl also set the collegiate indoor record in the event earlier that year. He claimed the weight throw the very next day.

DR. NANCY MEYER

CALVIN From 1988 to 2003, Calvin was unmatched in the MIAA and the Great Lakes Region. During that span, the Knights won 16 consecutive conference titles and won all but one regional crown.

Calvin qualified for the NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships for the first time in 1989 and three years later had a runner-up finish. Calvin won back-to-back titles in 1998 and 1999 to make Meyer just the third coach in NCAA DIII history to lead a women’s program to consecutive crowns.

Calvin continued to dominate the MIAA and contend at the NCAA Championships in the final six years of Meyer’s career. The Knights won five of six conference titles between 2000 and 2005 and finished as high as fifth in 2002 and 2003.

Meyer, a two-time National Coach of the Year and eighttime Regional Coach of the Year, stepped down in 2006. She remained an integral part of the Calvin athletic department as the Senior Associate Athletics Director/ Athletics Compliance Director and as a full-time professor in the Calvin kinesiology department before retiring at the end of the 2020-2021 academic year.

JOHN MOON

Once Moon wrapped up his athletic career, he got his first taste of coaching at the Kilmer Job Center and then jumped in with both feet at Rahway (N.J.) High School. Moon created a juggernaut out of a dormant track & field program, leading the Indians to 33 championships and a 99-11 dual meet record in seven years.

Moon’s rise continued in 1972, when he was named the head coach of cross country and track & field at Seton Hall University. The Pirates won the men’s mile relay at the 1973 NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships and followed that up with a meetrecord performance of 3:14.0 the following year – en route to a fourth-place team finish – to become just the third program to win back-to-back national titles in that event.

Five more national event titles followed for the Pirates, including four from the women’s team during a 1994 campaign that saw them finish third indoors and eighth outdoors.

With as much national success as The Hall had in track & field – which included 73 All-America honors over the years – conference dominance was just a formality. From 1980 until 2010, the Pirates racked up six team titles and 225 individual or relay titles at the BIG EAST Championships.

DENNIS SHAVER

LSU After 9 years as an assistant, Shaver took over the LSU program in 2004. During those 9 years, his athletes won 18 individual and seven relay titles at the NCAA Indoor or Outdoor championships during this period.

The long list of athletes coached by Shaver includes the program’s two winners of The Bowerman, Kimberlyn Duncan (2012) and Sha’Carri Richardson (2019). Richardson is one of 10 men or women Shaver guided to the NCAA title in the 100 meters alone, including the versatile Xavier “X-Man” Carter. LSU’s sprint depth has regularly impressed as the Tigers have won 26 NCAA titles in relay events under Shaver.

Shaver has led the Tigers to a pair of national team titles. The women captured the first, back in 2008. Then, in 2021, Shaver’s men romped to a decisive NCAA victory behind six event titles . More than 30 of Shaver’s athletes have continued to the Olympic stage, with 10 earning medals.

Shaver’s list of honors includes four National Coach of the Year awards from the USTFCCCA as well as once being named as the national Assistant Coach of the Year. He has been named Regional Coach of the Year nine times and the SEC Coach of the Year eight times.

JOHN WEAVER

APPALACHIAN STATE App State’s cross country and track & field programs accumulated 78 conference team championships, with 75 coming in the Southern Conference before the Mountaineers moved to the Sun Belt Conference in 2014. Weaver was honored a total of 43 times as conference Coach of the Year.

Weaver returned to App State to get his Master’s in biology and worked with the men’s cross country and track & field programs as a graduate assistant in 1982 during transformational times for women’s sports. Weaver helped the Southern Conference begin championships in cross country (1985), outdoor track (1987) and indoor track (1988). App State became a dominant force in all three sports, winning the SoCon “Triple Crown” seven times.

Weaver coached many accomplished women, highlighted by hurdler Melissa Morrison, who won 12 SoCon individual titles and went on to earn a pair of Olympic bronze medals, and Mary Jayne Harrelson, the 1999 and 2001 NCAA 1500-meter champion. Harrelson and Morrison were two major pieces in App State earning 23 total All-America honors under his watch.

During the summer of 2012, Weaver served as the sprints and hurdles coach for the women’s USA National Under-23 team that competed in Mexico.