Track Is Back! NJCU Elevates Track and Field to Varsity Status for 2018-19
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¿ìèÆƽâ°æ (NJCU) has announced that its men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field program, currently competing on the club level, will be elevated to varsity status, effective with the Fall 2018 semester.
Under the direction of new head coach Patrick O’Neill who joined the University in January, the program will compete as a member of the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC), beginning with the indoor season which will start in December.
The elevation of track and field will bring NJCU’s sports offerings to 16. It represents the first new varsity sport added since men’s golf in 2010.
The re-introduction of track and field is a welcome addition to a flourishing athletics department. Before being discontinued after the 2009-10 season, the program enjoyed tremendous competitive success. It is the third time in the history of NJCU athletics that the University will sponsor the sport.
NJCU brought back women’s track and field in 1994 and reintroduced men’s track in 2002 for the first time since the 1981-82 season. The program quickly became one of NJCU’s most successful sports. Highlighted by 11 individual national championships and 58 combined All-Americans, including five championships by Diana Lawson from 2001-05, four previous members of the women’s track and field program have been inducted in the NJCU Athletics Hall of Fame since 2011—Lawson, national champion Andrea Herbert, Denay Caldwell and Ebony Barnes.
The men claimed two overall ECAC Championships, three top 10 finishes at the NCAA Championship, and an all-time national record in the 4x100-meter relay that still stands.
The men burst onto the national scene when they placed first of 64 teams at the 2005 ECAC Division III Outdoor championship and followed that up with a first place standing among 44 teams at the 2005-06 ECAC Division III Indoor championship. Indoors, the men placed as high as fifth at the 2005-06 NCAA Division III indoor championship. NJCU was seventh at the 2004-05 NCAA indoor championship and eighth at the 2005 outdoor championship.
Meanwhile, the Gothic Knight women were the 2004-05 ECAC indoor championship runner-up and listed second of 68 teams at the 2005 ECAC outdoor championship meet. That same year, NJCU’s women placed 10th nationally outdoors at the NCAA Championship.
Perhaps the most notable moment in program history came on the ultimate national stage on April 29, 2006, when the men’s outdoor track and field made history at the Penn Relays, as a team of Anthony Miles, Thomas Hunter, Ronald Hussey, and Terry Pearson crushed the NCAA Division III record in the 4x100-meter relay, becoming the first Division III school to run a sub-40 second race, timing 39.95 seconds. Miles previously won back-to-back NCAA national indoor championships in the 55-meter dash in 2005 and 2006.
Lawson won the 2001, 2002 and 2004 national championships in the 55-meter dash, setting the NCAA Division III record on March 12, 2004 when she ran 6.93 seconds in the NCAA trials; that record was never broken. In 2005, she captured a pair of national championships in the outdoor 100 and 200-meter dashes, and was named the NCAA Division III Championship Female Track Athlete of the Meet.
Indoors, the program produced 13 All-Americans on the men’s side and 15 All-American women. Outdoors, the men claimed 12 All-America plaques with 18 All-America distinctions from the women.
At the NJAC championship meet, the program still holds records in the women’s indoor 55 meters and 4x200-meter relay, the men’s outdoor 4x100-meter relay and women’s outdoor 100 meters.
The program will train at the Jersey City Armory during the indoor season and the Charles Mays Memorial Track in Lincoln Park during the outdoor campaign.
The first meet for the new varsity program will be on December 1, 2018 when the men’s and women’s teams compete at the Fast Track Season Opener at the Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex in Staten Island. Meanwhile, the outdoor programs will have their debut on March 24, 2019 at the St. Joseph’s College Annual Spring Opener in Patchogue, N.Y.
Caption: NJCU track star Anthony Miles wins national title on May 28, 2005.