USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame Class of 2023 Announced

NEW ORLEANS – The U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) is privileged to announce the six coaches who will be inducted into the USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2023!

John Homon, Wes Kittley, Phil Lundin, Donna Ricks, Martin Smith and Victor Thomas will all be enshrined in the USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame, for not only their historic and incredible accomplishments as cross country and/or track & field coaches, but also the long-lasting impact their contributions have had – and will continue to have – on the sports they coached.

QUICK LINK: USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame History

These six coaches will be honored at the 2023 USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Presented by REKORTAN on Tuesday, December 12, at the USTFCCCA Convention, held at the Gaylord Rockies Resort Hotel and Convention Center outside of Denver, Colorado.

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 and serves as an inspiration to coaches everywhere.

Keep reading to learn more about the Class of 2023.

John Homon

John Homon’s athletic and coaching career was defined by one thing: winning.

From his days as a lineman on Athol High School’s undefeated football team in 1962, when he was affectionately known as “Big John,” to his final season as the leader of Mount Union’s cross country team, Homon had an innate ability to secure victories across the board. Notably, Homon was also a North American arm/wrist wrestling champion, showcasing his athletic versatility.

In 1978, Homon arrived in Alliance, Ohio, after completing his master’s in physical education at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The newly appointed head coach of men’s cross country and track & field at Mount Union wrapped up his undergraduate work at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, after serving in the Vietnam War as a medic.

Homon guided the Purple Raiders to remarkable success in the Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC). Out of the 93 combined team titles awarded by the OAC in cross country, indoor track & field and outdoor track & field during his tenure, Homon’s teams captured an impressive 54 titles. Mount Union topped the podium 21 times in indoor track & field, 19 times in outdoor track & field, and 14 times in cross country. The Purple Raiders also racked up 503 individual titles at the OAC Championships with an even 500 coming in track & field.

Under Homon’s watch, the Purple Raiders excelled on the national stage, too. Mount Union athletes secured an astounding 42 national championships and earned 204 All-America honors, with many of these accolades coming in outdoor events. Notable Homon-coached athletes included Dave Cooper and Shawn Watson. Cooper won both the 5000-meter and 10,000-meter titles in consecutive years at the NCAA DIII Outdoor Championships. Watson dominated the horizontal jumps, soaring to five NCAA crowns – including an unprecedented outdoor long-jump four-peat from 1996 to 1999, which has yet to be matched by any athlete in NCAA history.

Cooper and Watson led the Purple Raiders to an impressive four-year streak where they reached the NCAA podium both indoors and outdoors. Mount Union finished runner-up in 1996 and 1999, achieving the team’s best finishes under Homon’s guidance.

Homon was named NCAA DIII National Coach of the Year three times: 1997 and 1998 for indoor track & field; 2006 in outdoor track & field. Additionally, Homon was bestowed Regional Coach of the Year honors three times during his illustrious career.

Wes Kittley

Wes Kittley’s coaching journey has been deeply rooted in the southern plains.

Hailing from Rule, Texas, Kittley began his illustrious coaching career at his alma mater, Abilene Christian, where he achieved remarkable success. Later, he has continued to add to his accolades in Lubbock as the head coach at Texas Tech.

Throughout his career, Kittley has led an impressive 30 squads to national team titles, a feat rarely matched in the world of track & field coaching. His combined achievements at both the NCAA Division II level with ACU and the Division I level with Texas Tech have solidified his status as one of only two coaches to secure national titles in both realms.

Kittley quickly made an impact at ACU, securing the Lone Star Conference women’s outdoor title in 1984 and earning a third-place finish at the NCAA DII Outdoor Track & Field Championships. The following year, he guided the ACU women’s team to their first national crown and captured eight more indoor or outdoor trophies with that squad before being given the reins to the Wildcat men’s program prior to the 1992-93 campaign.

Many more national titles followed for the Wildcats – a whopping 29 total with Kittley at the helm. That included two years – 1996 and 1999 – when ACU made a clean sweep of the men’s and women’s NCAA DII indoor and outdoor crowns in the same year. He racked up 31 Lone Star Conference team track & field titles – never losing amid an era when the conference didn’t have an indoor championship. His ACU athletes won 155 individual national titles as 302 individuals earned All-American status.

Texas Tech soon called – and Kittley answered. The Red Raiders were then in the bottom half of the Big 12 Conference in track & field, but Kittley turned the program around. By 2005, Kittley had Texas Tech atop the Big 12 team standings in track & field for the first time by winning the men’s indoor title. Kittley added seven more Big 12 team titles, including two in 2023.

In 2019, Kittley reached an unprecedented stratum in Red Raider history: he led Texas Tech to its first national title in any men’s sport when they topped the podium at the NCAA DI Outdoor Championships in Austin. His squad was led by Divine Oduduru, who swept the 100- and 200-meter crowns and was later named a finalist for The Bowerman.

Still in charge at Texas Tech, Kittley’s athletes have amassed 30 individual national titles and 283 individual All-American awards through the 2023 track & field season.

Throughout his career, Kittley has garnered numerous coaching accolades. He is a five-time National Coach of the Year and hauled in 19 Regional Coach of the Year honors.

Phil Lundin

Phil Lundin is a Minnesotan, through and through.

Lundin’s coaching career was entrenched in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, where he led athletes and teams to numerous titles without traveling far between coaching positions. From Burnsville High School to the University of Minnesota and finally to St. Olaf College, Lundin’s coaching journey covered a distance of no more than 90 miles. Even his schooling, which included earning a master’s in physical education and a Ph.D. in biomechanics from the University of Minnesota, kept him close to his Minnesotan roots.

Throughout a remarkable 46-year, Hall-of-Fame coaching career, Lundin’s athletes amassed more than 150 individual event titles, including eight individual crowns at the NCAA Division III Track & Field Championships. Notably, St. Olaf standouts Paul Escher and Jake Campbell made history by becoming the first male teammates to win 1500-meter titles in consecutive years at the NCAA DIII Outdoor Championships (Escher in 2015; Campbell in 2016).

The pinnacle of Lundin’s career came in 2013 when he led St. Olaf to victory at the NCAA DIII Cross Country Championships. With four Oles earning All-America honors, including a crucial role played by then-freshman Campbell, they secured a narrow two-point victory over North Central (Ill.), matching the closest finish in meet history. It was a remarkable rise for St. Olaf, as it finished no better than 14th in the previous five seasons under Lundin’s direction.

St. Olaf rode the momentum of that historic win into five more top-5 finishes at the NCAA Championships in the subsequent three years. Three of those top-5 finishes came during the 2014-15 academic year – second in cross country, fourth indoors and fifth outdoors – which led the Oles to place third in the USTFCCCA NCAA DIII Program of the Year Final Standings.

Before his time at St. Olaf, Lundin worked alongside Hall-of-Fame coaches Roy Griak and Gary Wilson at the University of Minnesota. During his tenure as the head coach of the men’s track & field program, the Golden Gophers earned five top-10 finishes at the NCAA Championships and secured four Big Ten titles. Lundin’s outstanding coaching performance earned him the United States Track Coaches Association Division I Coach of the Year award in 2003.

Donna Ricks

Donna Ricks leads by example.

In the early days of her illustrious coaching career, Ricks competed in and even won various heptathlons while coaching at institutions like Dodge City (Kan.) CC and Northwest Missouri State. As an All-American athlete during her collegiate days at Minnesota State, Mankato, Rick’s passion for athletics – and the thrill of competition – never waned.

After several years at both Dodge City CC and Northwest Missouri State, Ricks returned to her alma mater in 1987 as a coach and wasted no time making an impact. Ricks guided the Maverick women’s cross country team to team titles in both the North Central Conference (NCC) and the Central Region, and then achieved the program’s best-ever finish at NCAA DII Cross Country Championships where they placed third.

In 1993, Ricks moved to Northfield, some 60 miles northeast of Mankato, to become the head coach of women’s cross country and track & field at Carleton College.

Over the years, she transformed the Knights’ cross country program into a perennial contender at both the conference and regional levels. Under her guidance, Carleton has won 11 MIAC crowns, six regional titles, and made 16 appearances at the NCAA DIII Cross Country Championships. The team’s breakthrough came in 2022, with a historic fourth-place finish and their first-ever podium appearance at the national championships.

In track & field, the Knights have excelled at the individual level with Ricks at the helm. Amina Ricks (no relation) secured Carleton’s first individual championship under Ricks’s tutelage in 1994. Since then, four athletes have won six more individual titles, with Amelia Campbell’s exceptional performances earning her three combined-event crowns between 2014 and 2016.

Overall, the Knights have earned more than 60 All-America honors in cross country, indoor track & field and outdoor track & field, with a majority of those coming from outdoor competitions.

Ricks has been named USTFCCCA Regional Coach of the Year eight times since 2009. She became only the second female coach in NCAA DIII award history to win three consecutive cross country honors from 2017 to 2019.

Beyond her collegiate coaching role, Ricks served as the U.S. National Women’s Heptathlon Coach in 1996 and also teaches in the physical education, athletics, and recreation department at Carleton College. 

Martin Smith

Cross country was more than a sport in which Martin Smith forged his Hall-of-Fame career: It can also describe his travels between coaching positions that spanned from coast to coast.

Smith’s destinations included some of the highest points one could imagine – national team titles at Virginia (women) and Wisconsin (men twice), plus stops at Oregon, Oklahoma and Iowa State that included multiple top-5 national finishes.

His trophy collection is impressive, including cross-country team titles in the ACC, Big Ten, Pac-10, and Big 12. Notably, his 12 men’s Big Ten crowns represent the most by any coach in the conference as of 2023. Under his guidance, athletes he mentored also secured individual cross-country titles in these four conferences. Combining both cross country and track & field, Smith’s athletes amassed more than 300 All-America honors.

Hailing from Alexandria, Virginia, Smith began his collegiate coaching career at the University of Virginia, where he assisted the Cavaliers to the first-ever women’s title awarded at the NCAA DI Cross Country Championships in 1981. The following year, as head coach, Smith led them to another resounding victory. Notably, Lesley Welch, one of the top runners, claimed the individual title by a significant 27-second margin.

Smith’s journey continued the next year when he succeeded Dan McClimon as Wisconsin’s men’s cross country coach after McClimon tragically passed away in a plane crash. Smith built upon the foundation that McClimon laid, leading the Badgers to 14 consecutive top-10 finishes at the NCAA DI Cross Country Championships – nine times reaching the top-5, topped by national titles in 1985 and 1988 (with Tim Hacker securing the individual title in 1985).

His next venture led him to Oregon in the summer of 1998, where he was hired to replace retiring men’s coach Bill Dellinger, who would be inducted into the USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame later that year. Smith guided the Ducks to four runner-up team Pac-10 finishes in men’s cross country as well as a team title in 1983 in men’s outdoor track & field. He became the school’s first Director of Track & Field and Cross Country in the summer after the retirement of women’s coach Tom Heinonen, another future Hall-of-Famer.

Smith moved to Oklahoma in 2005, where he served as Director of Track & Field and Cross Country for eight years. His stewardship brought the men’s track & field team to two Big 12 titles, while the Sooner men’s cross country team finished top-10 at the NCAA Championships in each of his final three seasons.

In 2013, Smith took over at Iowa State and immediately guided the Cyclone women’s cross country team to a Big 12 title – the first of six such crowns. National success followed, too, as Iowa State was runner-up at the NCAA DI Cross Country Championships the next year. His men’s teams won three Big 12 cross country titles and one in indoor track & field. In his final four years in Ames, Smith’s men’s cross country teams all finished top-10 nationally, including in 2019 when Edwin Kurgat won the national individual title.

Smith was twice named National Men’s Coach of the Year in cross country and earned eight Regional Coach of the Year honors between cross country and indoor track & field.

Victor Thomas

Victor Thomas brought more than incredible success in track & field to Lincoln (Mo.).

Fourteen national team titles in NCAA Division II women’s track & field stand out, as do more than 140 individual national titles and 950 All-America honors, but Thomas – a native of Jamaica who is affectionately known as “Poppy” – values the entire student-athlete experience.

“I remember I had this athlete who, when he came, he was struggling to meet the required (2.0 grade point average) and we encouraged him and the day of his graduation, tears came to my eyes,” Thomas told the Jamaica Star in 2021. “I don’t really cry when we win championships, but to see the youths get their degrees and establish themselves in society there is no feeling like it.”

Whether it is athletically or academically, Thomas has had plenty of opportunities to celebrate. Since taking over the men’s and women’s track & field programs at Lincoln in 2002, at least one of his squads has finished in the top-10 at the NCAA DII Championships indoors or outdoors every year but one – the lone exception being 2020, a year whose national track & field championships were not held due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to his 14 national titles (five indoor and nine outdoor), his Blue Tigers have finished in the top-10 nationally as a team 66 times, with 52 of those being in the top-5. His squads have been named USTFCCCA NCAA Division II Scholar Team of the Year seven times, and four athletes – Nandelle Cameron (2008), Sedeekie Edie (2016), Ryan Brown (2019) and Kizan David (2021) – have earned Scholar Athlete of the Year honors.

Prior to coaching at Lincoln, Thomas was an assistant coach for two years at Gardner-Webb, where he guided David Lloyd to the NCAA DII crown in the 400-meter hurdles.

Thomas has been named USTFCCCA National Coach of the Year six times and Regional Coach of the Year on 11 occasions, plus 11 conference Coach of the Year honors. He has been inducted to the Drake Relays (2012) and Missouri Sports (2021) Halls of Fame, the latter joining his Lincoln track & field program being inducted in 2013.