Let’s Discus(s) Some NCAA Throwing History

Back in 1987, Cliff Felkins of Abilene Christian became the last male athlete in NCAA history to win an NCAA DII and an NCAA DI throwing title in the same year. That’s because, not long after Felkins completed the same-year discus sweep with a heave of 61.00m (200-1) at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships, just weeks after winning the NCAA DII crown, Division I officials ruled that it would no longer invite the top finishers from the NCAA DII and NCAA DIII Championships to the NCAA DI meet.

Felkins, who topped the NCAA DII podium once again the following year, helped the Wildcats win back-to-back team titles, two of an NCAA DII-record 19 the program captured before transitioning to the NCAA DI level as part of the Southland Conference in 2013.

Thirty-two years after he doubled up in NCAA laurels, Felkins – now a coach at Texas Tech – sat in the stands at Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin, Texas, eyes fixated on his prized pupil, Eric “Duke” Kicinski, who prepared to vie for the national title in the same event at the 2019 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

And, like his coach, Kicinski reigned as NCAA DII discus champ – his coming in 2016 when he helped West Texas A&M to a program-best, eighth-place team finish. Kicinski edged Harding’s Josh Syrotchen by just 8 centimeters (3 inches) thanks to his fourth throw of 57.71m (189-4).

Fast forward three years and Kicinski is now a graduate student at Texas Tech. He developed into a top contender for the NCAA DI crown under Felkins and entered the meet as the season’s No. 2 performer on the Descending Order List with a mid-April school record of 63.45m (208-2).

Kicinski had the weight of a red-and-black world on his shoulders that night. The Red Raiders needed at least two points out of him to secure a share of the university athletic department’s first men’s national team title in any sport. If Kicinski matched Felkins as a two-division NCAA champion – or finished in the top-6 – Texas Tech would clinch the outright crown since the most eventual runner-up Florida could tally would be 52 (A win would give the Red Raiders 60 points; a top-6 would be at least 53).

Any nerves Kicinski felt that night didn’t show — not on his first throw and certainly not after Payton Otterdahl of North Dakota State and Kord Ferguson of Alabama pushed him down to third place entering the final three attempts. That’s because Kicinski followed up a first-round mark of 60.73m (199-3) that put him into the initial lead with a 62.53m (205-2) howitzer on his fourth attempt that sliced through the Texas night and eventually gave him the second smallest margin of victory in meet history at 5 cm (2″) over Otterdahl.

All told, Kicinski’s win meant there was something else that he and his coach could share together at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships – a national team title.