Donnelly honored.

[whitecat]

Tom Donnelly, a former Nova great runner, and head coach of track and Xcountry at Haverford
College for decades will be inducted into the HOF for coaches of those sports. His relationship
with our teams currently is still close. I believe he coached Marcus after Marcus' graduation. He
is a great coach and a true gentleman.

 

[LSU-Nit]

Walt is right, as usual. Tom was my high school XC coach (believe it or not) in 1972 at LaSalle High School in Philly suburbs before he left for Haverford. He had attended that same high school a few years earlier (and won 3x Catholic League XC individual crowns and 3X Catholic League mile titles, in addition to winning Eastern States XC at VCP in a course record time) before heading to Villanova (where he won 3 NCAA XC titles -- in 2 cases as Villanova's #1 finisher at Nationals). Despite his talents as a coach (coaching both Marcus & Sydney Maree in their heydays), he could not make me a competent runner. That being said, this was only 3 years after he left Villanova as an All-American in both XC and the steeple. He went on all runs with us (imagine that level of talent and fitness leading high school kids -- pretty inspiring). He led LaSalle High to 2x Catholic League XC crowns in his 3-4 years there. Then off to Haverford. I keep in touch with him a bit via email -- he's a 100% class act. BTW, he was VERY close to being Villanova's head XC/T&F coach. The stars did not exactly align and it wasn't meant to be. But his record of achievement and commitment to Haverford athletes is legendary. My sense of things is that Villanova has Marcus as coach because Tom recommended him (and encouraged Marcus to take the job) at the time. If Villanova had offered Tom the HC job when John Marshall got it, he would have taken it, I think. Things were not handled exactly well, and the rest is history. He deserves all the honors he's received.

 

[novaclassof90]

The guy is a legend in the college track coaching community.My dad was pretty good friends with him when they were both coaching at small PA colleges. Good guy who can coach up middle dist/dist runners with the best of them.

Whitecat: here is a very trivial but cool college track fact for you.
Donnelly also coached the first NCAA Div. III runner in history to break the four minute mile. Back in 97 Karl Paranya went under 4 minutes at a meet at Haverford. His pacesetter that day was none other than Marcus O'Sullivan. there is a video of the race on youtube.