Haverford Coach profiled in NY Times

Ditto what Bernie said. This is a man with dignity, who respects everyone who earns it, and isn't afraid to tell you about that respect. I was there with Karl, and it would have been easy for Tom to focus on his achievements all the time. And don't get me wrong, Karl was a class guy and worked hard as hell. But the single most memorable experience of my time at Haverford was a speech Tom gave about a guy on the team who worked his a#@ off and had a PR of about 4:40 for 1500m. My girlfriend at the time heard the speech and broke into tears. Afterward she said she'd never question my devotion to running again. She got it; she would have laid down in traffic for him after that.

Actually, I take that back. The most memorable experience was when we all knew Tom had been offered the head coaching job at Villanova. He called a team meeting, and we were all absolutely convinced that he would take the job. Half of us, even the no-talent hacks like me who couldn't have run at 'nova in a million years, were talking about transferring. Then Tom came into this cramped little locker room. You could have heard a pin drop. And he told us that he couldn't leave us. That he woke up every morning thinking about how hard we worked, and that we were an inspiration to him. That he just wouldn't be able to live with himself if he chased dollars so he could coach faster, more talented guys.

Tom convinced me not to drop out of college, not to give up running, to be the sort of person who just doesn't give up. Who honors my commitments, honors my family, and doesn't take the easy way out of anything.

The NYT article, as good as it is, doesn't do justice to the man. I know he's not unique, but he's damn close. Not a day goes by that I don't think about how to live up to him.

There are numerous stories about this - Tom has the time and enthusiasm for ANYBODY willing to work.

One indoor meet, Liam O'Neill ran 3:48 (PB 3:41, HS best 4:41), and Tom muttered, "Nice race". Later a guy improved his 300y time from 45 to 41 and that was all Tom could talk about on the way home.

This is done w/ a student body of 500 men. At a school where the single #1 priority without any doubt is to study your balls/tits off - Tom reinforces this everyday as well. This is a school w/ no football team, no Greek system, no class rank, no deans list. A classic Quaker, "Study for its own sake" environment. That is every single student's priority there. So running is NOT the athletes' top priority.

Maybe he doesn't have the best absolute record, but given the material that walks in the door, the budget and resources, Tom has produced a sterling record.

It comes down to resourcefulness and creativity. Tom has lots of these, and you want to be around people like this, no matter what your endeavour.

It's amazing how someone like TD can turn letsrun into a veritable love fest. Even the troll posts here seem half-hearted.

I never ran for Tom, actually went to a competing DIII school in the northeast where I sucked up the track for two years. However, I had the pleasure to grow up as neighbors with Tom (Ardmore!) and I would like to simply reiterate what has already become readily apparent: beyond being a helluva coach, Tom is a complete class act. He helped me out a bit as a shitty little high school runner, at the same time he was coaching Paranya to the first sub 4 time in DIII (i believe). Just a genuine good guy. Kudos to him. I was so excited when i saw that article on the front page of the nytimes webpage this morning!

Even if he's coaching at a somewhat obscure little college, anyone who knows anything about track and field has a deep respect for Tom.

dt

heres the best part wrote:

'Here is the thing: Haverford has never, I don't think, had a sub-4:20 recruit. Foley, Paranya, all were not under 4:20 in HS and Tom made them sub-4 caliber guys.

And the current teams have been a bunch of decent guys in high school - 9:45/4:30 type guys - who become D3 ballers.

How many coaches in the country can do what he does with NO top tier guys?',

In the interest of information, here is an all-time best list of Haverford runners and their HS PRs (to the best of my abilities). I took the two events I know best:

1500

1. 3:39.84 - Karl Paranya '97 (4:24 1600)

2. 3:43.75 - Jason Bernstein '01 (4:24 1600)

3. 3:44.50 - Kevin Foley '83 (3:55 1500)

4. 3:44.71 - Liam O'Neill '86 (4:50 1600)

5. 3:45.0h - Matt Leighninger '92 (4:3X? 1600)

6. 3:46.29 - Peter Rook '02 (4:36 1600)

7. 3:46+ - Aaron Curry '94 (4:24 1600)

8. 3:48.8h - Seamus McElligott '91 (4:18 1600)

9. 3:49.8h - Mike Sheely '83 (4:11.7 mile)

10. 3:49.9h - Ntusi Ntobeko '98 (4:00 1500)

11. 3:50.43 - Greg Bielecki '03 (4:19 1600)

12. 3:50.2h - Ian Fraser '01 (4:27 1600)

13. 3:50.67 - Bobby Cannon '05 (4:20 1600m)

Steeplechase

1. 8:56.9h - JB Haglund '02 (9:53 3200)

2. 8:59.03 - Ian Fraser '01 (9:47 3200)

3. 8:59.34 - Matt Leighninger '92 (not sure)

4. 9:03.05 - Scott Sargrad '04 (10:17 3200)

5. 9:04.34 - Ntusi Ntobeko '98 (4:00 1500)

6. 9:04.77 - Grant Scott '06 (9:59 3200)

7. 9:05.68 - Ian Ramsey-North '08 (9:47 3200)

8. 9:08.6h - Nate Suter '97 (not sure)

9. 9:10.63 - Willie Stroever '02 (10:20? 3200)

10. 9:12.3h - Jimmie Steinemann '02 (9:35 3200)

I apologize for any errors.

Yea good article the guy is a class act…I run for another school but every Christmas break he goes out of his way to allow me to workout on his track…He is also kind enough to give a few good pointers…a true class act

susqurunner wrote:

I ran for a University in the now-defunct Middle Atlantic Conference, formerly the largest D3 conference in the country and I competed against Haverford...I was an all-conference type of runner, top 20ish in XC and top 6 in the 1500 and 5000 at teh MAC meet several times during my 4 years...

...

The MAC still exists dumbass...its a lot different, but I\'d love to here your story on how its defunct...

dollars to donuts td has not read the ny times article, prbly won't ever read it not even in secret. and couldn't give a rats ass. except maybe that it will help with recruiting. nor could he care what somebody on letsrun or anybody else for that matter think of his coaching. his own toughest critic by far anyway.

by the way there's a website actually devoted to td worship on a daily basis, its called

http://www.runnerunner.com

Class act is absolutely the best way to describe TD. I ran for another school in the area and knew TD a bit. Quick story that summarizes his character: Conference meet my senior year. I run a good (for me) race but the officials miscount the laps and claim that I never finished the race (they thought I had only run 24 laps). TD had watched the race (since about 3 of his guys had handed my a$$ to me) and went over to the officials (without anyone asking) and starts protesting in my defense. This cost his team points even (since one of his guys was behind me). Class act.

Have to agree with all the positives being said on this thread. I met the coach when my son was looking at colleges his senior year of high school. Although he was very impressed with TD, he ended up going to a another college that was a better fit for him overall, but that also had an excellent coach. TD sent my son a very nice hand written letter wishing him well at his chosen school. The kid was not coming to his school yet he took the time to write him. Just a great guy and a class act overall!

as i guy who ran against haverford, i'll have to also agree that donnelly is a great guy and an outstanding coach. hear hear!

Robert Cannon, a recent grad, also made the 2008 (technically 2007...) Olympic Trials in the marathon. Second youngest guy to make it. I believe three of his haverford runners qualified for the trials: Seamus, Karl, and Robert. would seem technical enough the get the job done. If you mean Vo2 studies and heart rate training, then no, he doesn't use it. But what one might caught technical, another might call distractions. He has over 30 years of statistical data in his head. He tells his runners what they need to know, on a need to know basis. This is a better use of technical training than gadgets.

Certainly the person has to substantiate his/her reasoning a lotter better. Otherwise he remains a joker, at best, but more resonably a spreader of misinformation and a waste of time.

sorry, "call" not "caught"

It was a great article, surprisingly accurate, but no article can properly portray Tom Donnelly. The idea of him not being a good technical coach is absolute rubbish. When I first met him in the early 1980's, besides the Haverford team, he was probably coaching about 40 some other people privately, gratis, some he just gave workouts, and they checked in, some he would actually time on the track after the Haverford team practice was over, some would run with the Haverford team.

The story that Tom ever said "nice race" and nothing else to Liam O'Neill after a 3:48 1500 is also rubbish. That was what is remarkable about Tom, he appropriately recognizes everyone's progress. I was around for much of Liam O'Neill's excellent career, and can tell you that Tom spent a LOT of time making Liam a better runner, student and person.

Tom coached a number of other elite runners to their best performances ever besides Marcus and Sydney, including Gerry O'Reilly running a sub-28 minute 10k after he finished his Villanova career.

Besides all the excellence, the sheer joy of Tom's camaraderie and friendship is unique. He is extremely intelligent and humorous. He is serious, but not dour. 10% of the male student population of Haverford College runs for his team.

Very good points by havegoats on Donnelly the technical coach. Tom has a photographic memory, and keeps careful records of his workouts. While he does not specifically use heart rate monitors, he has drafted his workouts to accommodate runners who did use heart rate monitors (Marcus near the end of his career comes to mind). His workouts, particularly near the end of a season, are extremely precise and targeted.

A large part of Tom's coaching is actual observation of the runner and how he is physically reacting to the workout, knowing that it is not just reading the watch.

Tom is an absolute master at boiling down performance to its essentials, and discarding the rest. Liam O'Neill (1988) also qualified for the Trials in the 1500 (3:41) while Tom was coaching him (two years out of school).

runduderun faster faster wrote:

If you want to find a fault with this guy, it should be that Haverford tends to bomb at xc nationals (well they won't this year, because they won't make it). But a typical scenario would be for Haverford to tempo-run conferences and sweep it, tempo-run the first half of regionals and win solidly, then go all-out at nationals but finish around 15th. This didn't happen every year but it happened a lot.

At track nats they would do fine; there was just something about Thanksgiving weekend that didn't work for them.

And, none of this eradicates the amazing job they do of taking 10:00 hs guys and making them into all-americans.

this is a generally accurate criticism of tom or at least those of us who ran for him in the 90s and early 00s. of late tom seems to have solved those problems with the aforementioned 2nd, 3rd & 4th places at xc nats.

regardless, he is unequivocably the single most influential person in my life (but don't tell that to my parents or wife). a brilliant human being.

Early '70s Tom coached at our rival high school (LaSalle in Philly)and as we didn't even have our own track (we set up cones in our parking lot), TD would allow us to come over and train on their "state of the art" all weather facility...was ALWAYS so incredibly generous with advice and support...made you feel important (in his classicly understated way) even though you weren't even one of his own guys and barely squeaking under 5 minutes for a mile...nearly 40 years thereafter, I continue to credit Tom as my hands down single most important early influence in running...arguably amongst the most unheralded greats in American running of the past half century bar none!

MF

To the poster who said because of TD he will continue to run for the rest of his life - this is what it is really about. If you leave college with no love for the sport then what is the point? I went into college as a very accomplished HS runner with a pure and innocent love for the sport. I had a college coach who was not a class act like TD and robbed some/most of that love of the sport from many of us. Unfortunately I also saw the negative influence of our coach spill over into other aspects of many of my teammates lives. There should be more coaches like TD...

Clearly, anyone who has spent time with Tom has been touched by the attention he paid to them. He has a piercing gaze and clear speech that is totally engaging. As many others have already attested, his greatest ability may be in inspiring average runners to think of themselves as faster and dig deeper in workouts and races. I was fortunate enough to be one of those guys at LaSalle High (hello Mike!) where I stumbled into running after being inspired by Tom and his stories about Dave Patrick and Jumbo Elliot and hill repeats in his history class. Thirty seven years later I still have a passion for the sport and I give most of the credit for that to "The Master".

One of my favorite memories of Tom was of a note he posted on the team bulletin board one winter (when JV guys like me were running frigid road races while the varsity was racing indoors) telling everyone they were expected to be at a certain 8.4 mile race that weekend and there was no excuse for not being able to get a ride. He reminded us that if were were playing football our entire family would come to the game, even if we were riding the bench! But no, we were runners where everyone gets to "play" so... we had better be there.

Tom is a extraordinary coach whose programs cannot be boiled down for the masses a la Jack Daniels because so much of it is his own intuition and experience.

3rd guy from left is a Tom Donnelly.

NCAA XC championship team from 1966.

Can anybody name anybody else on this team??????

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/8120/temu4mw8.jpg