NEW ORLEANS – The U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) announced Tuesday the six coaches who will be inducted into the USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame as the Class of 2017.
Amy Deem, Peter Farwell, Jack Hazen, Bob Kersee, Fred Samara and Patrick Shane will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame for not only their incredible and historic accomplishments as track & field and cross country coaches, but also the long-lasting impact their contributions have had and will continue to have on the sports.
These six will be honored at the 2017 USTFCCCA Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Wednesday, December 13, at the USTFCCCA Convention in Phoenix, Arizona.
Started in 1995, the USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame exists to recognize coaches who have brought great distinction to themselves, to their institutions and to the sports of cross country and track & field. Each of the honorees exemplifies the qualities of dedication to the sport, leadership and passion for their profession that serve as an inspiration to coaches everywhere in the sports.
The full USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame and information on all of its past inductees can be found by CLICKING HERE.
"When I received the letter, I was completely overwhelmed and honored. With so many great coaches who have done so much for our sport, I never considered myself as someone to receive this honor. It is a tribute to the wonderful assistant coaches and student-athletes that I have been blessed to work with and coach." - Amy Deem
Coaching any sport for close to 30 years is a feat unto itself. Lasting that long in the profession at the same school is evidence that one is doing something right.
Since 1990, Amy Deem has been a part of the Miami (Fla.) track & field program, as the native of West Virginia was named the women’s head coach that year while serving as an intern in the compliance department.
By 2008, Deem was named the Director of Track & Field/Cross Country, becoming just the sixth woman to oversee both the men’s and women’s track and cross country programs at an NCAA Division I institution.
The secret to Deem’s longevity in Coral Gables is simple: she’s won.
Deem turned the Hurricanes into a national powerhouse. Prior to her appointment as the head coach in 1990, no Hurricane had recorded an NCAA qualifying mark. Since then, however, Deem and the Hurricanes are a regular fixture at NCAA Championships, as her athletes have laid claim to 14 national championships and nearly 200 First Team All-America honors.
Under her guidance, the Hurricanes’ hurdlers have dominated the national scene. Seven of the aforementioned 14 national championships have come in the hurdles, including an astounding five from Gillian Russell.
As a team, Miami (Fla.) have finished as high as third during the indoor campaign and seventh on the outdoor circuit.
Deem saw her women dominate the Big East during the early portion of her career, capturing two indoor conference championships (2003 and 2004) while laying claim to six outdoor titles (1998-99, 2001-04). Despite leaving the conference shortly after the 2004 title, Miami (Fla.) still owns a pair of conference championship records (4x100 and 4x400).
And since joining the ACC in 2004, Deem has won more ACC Women’s Indoor Championships (four, including the 2017 title) than all but one coach in conference history.
Deem has also made her mark on the sport outside of her tenure as coach of the Hurricanes. She served as the President of the United States Track Coaches Association from 2003-05, in addition to serving as the head coach of the United States team at the 2007 World Championships and the 2001 USATF Junior National team that competed in England and Scotland.
Deem’s success at Miami (Fla.) landed her the duty of serving her country during the 2012 London Olympics, where she was the head coach of the United States women’s team where her team posted one of the most dominating performances in USA Olympic track and field history. The team won 14 medals, including six gold, four silver and four bronze. Three of her former athletes - Murielle Ahoure, T'erea Brown and Lauryn Williams - competed in the Games.
In addition to Ahoure, Brown and Williams, a slew of Hurricanes have gone onto Olympic success during and after learning under Deem, including Patrina Allen and Yolanda McCray.
Deem has been named USTFCCCA South Region Coach of the Year several times, notably in 2016 and 2017 for indoor track & field.
"I'm still coming to grips with it. I feel very privileged and grateful. I'm not sure how I got it in regards to actual logistics, but I know I've worked extremely hard in this profession. It's highly, highly meaningful to me and my favorite event at Convention is the Hall of Fame Ceremony. I revel listening to what they say about their careers and what their experiences as coaches have been. It has inspired me." - Peter Farwell
For nearly four decades, Peter Farwell has been synonymous with Williams College.
He is as engrained into the fabric of the institution’s athletic department as the “Eph” nickname and the color purple.
Farwell graduated from Williams College in 1973 and then returned to campus six years later as head coach of the men’s cross country team. Over the next 37 years Farwell developed the Ephs into a consistent winner on the NCAA Division III level while also taking control of the women’s cross country team in 2000 and handling several positions with the track & field team, like head coach (1988 to 2001, 2008 and 2013) and assistant coach (present).
National success didn’t happen overnight for Farwell, though.
While winning Little Three titles became the norm for Farwell and his programs (76 have been won under Farwell’s watch), they didn’t hit it big at NCAAs until 1994. That’s when the Ephs handed Farwell his first NCAA team title with a 12-point win over North Central (Ill.) at the NCAA DIII Cross Country Championships in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Williams returned to The Promised Land the following year and polished off back-to-back titles – becoming just the third men’s program in NCAA DIII history to do so until that point.
Before Farwell took over the women’s program in 2000, the highest the team finished at NCAAs was third in 1998. The Ephs finished runner-up in Farwell’s first and second year, then won their first of three NCAA titles in 2002. Williams also topped the field in 2004 and 2015.
The 2015 cross country season was a special one for Farwell as he nearly led the Ephs to an NCAA team title sweep. The women posted the largest margin of victory in meet history (98 points) and the men finished nine points behind eventual champion UW-Eau Claire.
Farwell has seen 43 cross country runners earn 67 All-America honors and guided three of his runners to individual NCAA XC titles (Jeremie Perry in 1994, Neal Holtschulte in 2005 and Chiara Del Piccolo in 2011).
As head coach of the track & field teams, Farwell won a total of 33 New England titles. On the national level, the men finished seven times in the top-10 (which included two runner-ups) while the women finished no higher than third (which they did twice).
Farwell’s harriers have accumulated 152 All-America honors and 11 national championships on the track over the years.
He has also poured countless hours into developing a training system that many coaches use to try to emulate Williams’ success on all levels.
"I am very honored and extremely humbled to learn of my selection into the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame. This Hall represents many of my friends, mentors and legends of our sport. I am thrilled to join this distinguished group." - Jack Hazen
Coaching cross country and track & field wasn’t Jack Hazen’s first choice.
That distinction belonged to football, which is the sport Hazen started coaching as a graduate assistant under the legendary Woody Hayes at Ohio State.
But when a position opened up at Malone College in 1967 to coach both soccer and men’s track & field, Hazen jumped at the opportunity to lead his own programs. Hazen would never coach soccer, however, as the baseball coach – who had also been assigned men’s cross country – traded sports with the 26-year-old future Hall of Famer.
The rest, as they say, has been history.
It didn’t take long for Hazen to turn the Pioneers into a force on the NAIA level.
Malone’s men reached the NAIA Cross Country Championships in 1968 and decided that was a place they’d like to stay for a while. The Pioneers camped out at that meet for the next 43 years until their move to NCAA Division II in 2011 and placed in the top-10 35 times.
Hazen guided Malone’s men to its first NAIA team title in 1972 as it posted the largest margin of victory in 17-year history of that meet until that point (77 points).
Under Hazen, the Pioneers would win four more NAIA XC crowns. Malone’s women captured Hazen’s second team title eight years into his reign (Hazen took over that program in 1991 and still leads it) and the men reeled off three in a row from 2007 to 2009.
Hazen also made sure the Pioneers left their mark on the conference and district level in the NAIA. Malone’s men never lost a conference meet or district meet from 1968 until 2010, while the women earned their share of conference and district titles as well.
Under Hazen’s guidance, the men’s track & field team – which he served as the head coach from 1968 to 1995 – won 18 conference titles in a row from 1972 to 1989. District titles poured in, too, as the Pioneers won 19 including 16 straight between 1976 and 1991.
Hazen tutored a total of 325 All Americans if you combine honors earned in cross country and track & field, which account for more than 80 percent of the total number of All Americans in Malone athletics history.
In 2012, Hazen served as an assistant coach for the U.S. Track & Field Team at the London Olympics. He mentored the distance runners and Galen Rupp won silver at 10000 meters.
Hazen’s reach goes far beyond Canton, Ohio, where Malone University is located, as more than 100 of his former athletes are coaches themselves.
The name Kersee is synonymous with track & field.
The former UCLA and Cal State Northridge coach was a staple in collegiate track & field for more than 30 years. One of the premier sprints and hurdles coaches in the world, many collegiate athletes benefitted from the tutelage of Kersee and won NCAA, U.S., World and Olympic titles.
It didn’t take long for Kersee to make his mark on the sport. After graduating from Long Beach State where he helped coach the women’s track & field team as an undergrad, he moved onto Cal State Northridge for his first head coaching gig. The Matadors experienced immediate success under his watch, as his 1978 and 1979 squads won the AIAW Division I National Championships.
Kersee jumped to UCLA in 1980 and continued his success as an assistant coach for four seasons, helping the Bruins capture the women’s 1982 and 1983 NCAA Division I outdoor titles. During that time, he mentored the likes of Florence Griffith, LaShon Nedd, Sherri Howard and Arlise Emerson – all of whom won NCAA championships.
In 1984, Kersee took the reins of the program from former head coach Scott Chisam, serving as its head coach for nine seasons.
The Bruins experienced unprecedented success at the conference level, winning five Pac-10 titles across his final seven years. At the national level, eight of his last nine teams recorded top-7 finishes, including a runner-up result in 1988, 1989 and 1990.
Despite stepping down from the head coaching position in 1993, Kersee continued to work with the Bruins as a volunteer coach where he shared his expertise amongst a slew of Bruin athletes who won NCAA championships under his direction.
Outside of his work at UCLA, Kersee personally trained a “who’s who” of sprinters and hurdlers who have competed in the Diamond League, World Championships and Olympic Games. Kersee has played an instrumental role in the success of Gail Devers, Greg Foster, Allyson Felix, Jeanette Bolden, Dawn Harper, Valerie Brisco-Hooks, Andre Phillips, Michelle Perry, Joanna Hayes, Kerron Clement, Shawn Crawford and Andrea Anderson, among others. Kersee also coached his wife, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, one of the most recognized names in the history of the sport.
Kersee has been honored for his work as a coach, as he has twice been named the Nike Coach of the Year in 2005 and 2015.
"I am kind of overwhelmed. It's such a great honor to be inducted into the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame. Many of the people who are already in the Hall of Fame are my mentors. Many were instrumental in my collegiate and post-collegiate athletic career and many have been instrumental into developing me into the coach I am today." - Fred Samara
Fred Samara is an Ivy League lifer.
Six years after graduating from rival Penn and three years removed from competing at the 1976 Montreal Olympics in the decathlon, Samara was introduced as head coach of the Princeton men’s track & field program in 1979 – a position he currently holds.
At Penn, Samara was an accomplished athlete. He earned two All-America honors and won five individual championships at the Penn Relays.
When Samara arrived in Princeton, New Jersey, he knew what it took to win in the Ivy League and put that knowledge to good use.
Since 1979, Samara’s Tigers have won 41 Ivy League Heptagonal titles. Princeton has won 20 indoor crowns, 17 outdoor crowns and four in cross country (Samara coached those harriers from 1992 to 1998 and 2004 to 2007).
The Tigers dominated the Ivy League from 1997 to 2000. During that span, Princeton earned back-to-back-to-back Triple Crowns, winning team titles in cross country, indoor track & field and outdoor track & field in the same academic year. The Tigers would later accomplish that same feat in 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2014-15.
Samara’s charges have combined to win 429 Ivy League titles in track & field between individual and relay events. More than half of those (229) were obtained under a roof.
Princeton has been well-represented on the national level as well.
The Tigers have won three individual NCAA titles under Samara’s watch. Tora Harris swept the high jump crowns in 2002, Donn Cabral won the steeplechase in 2012 and the following year the team of Michael Williams, Austin Hollimon, Russell Dinkins and Peter Callahan brought the indoor distance medley relay title back to the Garden State.
Samara’s athletes have pulled together for a total of 74 All-America honors in track & field and another three in cross country. Forty-five of those All-America medals earned in track & field were done so by Samara’s athletes on the track compared to 29 in the field.
Cabral was one of four Princeton athletes coached by Samara to compete in the Olympics. The others were Harris, Debbie Saint-Phard and Augie Wolf, who both starred in the shot put. Wolf recorded the best finish out of Samara’s athletes as he finished fourth at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Outside of the collegiate level, Samara coached field events for the U.S. Track & Field Team at the 1987 IAAF World Championships in Rome and was an assistant coach for the Americans at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
Samara has been named USTFCCCA Mid-Atlantic Regional Coach of the Year nine times in his career: five outdoor (2001-02, 2011-13) and four indoor (2004, 2007, 2011-12).
Patrick Shane created his legacy from the ground up.
After a standout career as a member of the BYU track & field team from 1966 to 1970 and a six-year stint as head cross country and track & field coach at Provo (Utah) High School from 1974 to 1980, Shane returned to his alma mater as the first head coach of women’s cross country.
Shane proved to be an incredible architect and established a rock-solid foundation on which a perennial powerhouse was built.
From Shane’s first season in 1981 until his last in 2016, he guided the Cougars to 31 appearances at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships including 19 consecutive trips from 1989 to 2007. BYU also nabbed five consecutive bids from 1982 to 1986.
Under Shane’s direction, the Cougars reached the pinnacle in the late 1990s to early 2000s when they won four national titles (1997, 1999, 2001, 2002) and finished runner-up an additional three times (1998, 2000, 2003).
There was not a more dominant team in the current era than BYU in 2001. The Cougars, led by Michaela Mannova (fifth), Jessie Kindschi (seventh) and Tara Northcutt (ninth), outscored NC State by 86 points (62 to 148). That’s the largest margin of victory by a women’s team since the race distance changed from 5000 meters to 6000 meters that same year.
Mannova, Kindschi and Northcutt were three of the 30 women who earned a total of 51 All-America honors under Shane’s watch in cross country.
Needless to say, BYU also made quick work of the competition on the conference and regional level. Shane’s Cougars won 24 conference championships and 16 regional titles in his 36 years.
Shane also served as the distance and mid-distance coach with the women’s track & field team at BYU and was the head coach of the program from 2011 to 2013. It was in 2011 when the Cougars swept the indoor and outdoor team titles in the Mountain West Conference.
During his tenure at BYU, Shane tutored 66 women to All-America status and between them, they earned 150 citations. Out of those 66 women, nine won individual NCAA titles with the first coming in 1983 when Aisling Molloy won the indoor mile and last in 2012 when Nachelle Mackie completed the indoor-outdoor sweep of the 800-meter crowns.
Outside of the collegiate ranks, Shane served as head coach of three different national teams and mentored six athletes who would later compete in the Olympics.
Shane’s legacy continues to lives on as his son Chris is the head cross country coach and distance coach at Eastern Washington University.