McDonnell tells Sports Club how he went from dairy to icon

The second-largest crowd in the history of the Arkansas Sports Club welcomed John McDonnell, recently retired track and field and cross country coach at the University of Arkansas, Thursday at Ryan's Steakhouse.

The 71 in attendance, like the countless number of athletes and fans McDonnell touched in his 36 seasons at Arkansas, were appreciative. Thursday's crowd showed it with two standing ovations.

McDonnell's story is as legendary as are his accomplishments with the Razorbacks.

First, a short list of those UA milestones:

Forty-two national championships since 1984, including 11 cross country, 19 indoor track and 12 outdoor track. The number is more than any coach in any sport in the history of college athletics, with the next highest at 26.

Twelve consecutive NCAA national indoor championships (1984-95), the longest string of national titles by any school in any sport in collegiate history.

Eighty-four conference titles, including 34 consecutive cross country championships spanning the old Southwest Conference from 1974-90 and the Southeastern Conference from 1991-2007.

Five national Triple Crowns, indicating national championships in cross country, indoor and outdoor track during one school year, including three consecutive from 1991-94. Texas-El Paso is the only other school to win a national Triple Crown.

Twenty conference Triple Crowns, including eight straight from 1987-95.

Coached all but three of Arkansas's 182 track All-Americans; they earned a combined 645 All-America honors.

Coached 23 Olympians spanning three decades and six different Olympic Games, including a gold, silver and bronze medalist.

Now, the story:

McDonnell was born July 2, 1938, in County Mayo, Ireland. He grew up on a dairy farm, where he knew what hard work was, milking three or four cows by hand before and after school.

"Knowing what hard work was didn't do me any harm," he said.

He wasn't a runner until fellow Irishman Ronnie Delaney won the 1,500 meters in the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 and all of Ireland "wanted to be Ronnie Delaney," he said. He had some success in the country around County Mayo, outrunning in a mile race a university 800-meter champion who appeared in a "beautiful white warm-up suit" while McDonnell wore soccer shorts and ran in his bare feet.

"That last 200, I was seeing stars," he remembered. "I thought that finish would never come, but I beat him, and that's how my career started."

He moved to Dublin and got "a real touch of reality" running against "real runners." At his first national cross country race, he remembered nearly being lapped, but a former national champion pulled him aside and told him he had talent and could win the race the next year.

"A year from that day, I won by 400 meters," McDonnell said. "Having somebody to believe in you and you believe in them was the key."

He won six national championships in Ireland and qualified for the 1960 Olympics, but because the country could only afford to send one man to Rome, he was passed over in favor of a runner he'd beaten in the Trials but who had more experience.

"I thought, 'There'll be another Olympics,' but there wasn't," he said, reiterating his belief in not putting off until tomorrow what you can do today.

"Tomorrow may never come," he said.

After spending a summer visiting an aunt in New York and competing for the New York Athletic Club, he wasn't happy going back to Ireland, so he returned to New York. He worked for 18 months as a cameraman for a New York City television station before going to college at Southwestern Louisiana (now Louisiana-Lafayette), where he earned his bachelor's degree in education and All-America honors six times. He also got his first taste of coaching there.

"Our coach didn't know much about distance running, and he said he didn't know much about distance running, so me and this English guy (a teammate who helped recruit him there) were older guys, and we worked with the distance guys," he said. "We were pretty successful."

After being hired at Arkansas as cross country and assistant track coach in 1972 (he took over as track coach in 1978), he began building the foundation of his program on Irish distance runners. Niall O'Shaughnessy and Tom Aspel were two of the early stars; after the distance foundation was laid, he branched out to jumpers, such as Mike Conley, who went on to win the 1992 Olympic gold medal in the triple jump; throwers and sprinters. McDonnell sprint recruits Tyson Gay and Wallace Spearmon Jr. competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

After coming close to national titles in 1980-83, McDonnell said Conley and teammate Frank O'Mara came to him and offered some advice.

"They said, 'You're overcoaching,' and it was true," he said. "I made plans to win, and I made plans for second. I learned that you either talk about winning or you don't talk at all."

He admitted his Razorbacks had won national championships against superior teams and said attitude was the difference.

"If you think you're the best, you are, and if you think you're inferior, you are," he said.

When the Hogs were attempting to win their first national Triple Crown in June 1985, Conley realized a few minutes before the triple jump began that he'd forgotten his spikes. With no time to return to the hotel, he borrowed a pair of size 10s from David Swain, a Razorback distance runner.

"He put those on and said, 'They're a little tight, but they'll do,'" McDonnell remembered. "His first jump was 55 feet, and a Tennessee guy goes 56 after him. Well, on the next jump, he caught fire. All Conley ever needed was for somebody to go by him. On his next jump he went 58, which at the time was a world record, but it was wind-aided. His next one was 58-2, and that was his last one because he burst out of his shoes.

"Those are the type athletes that win. There was a job to be done, and he did it."

McDonnell said he was always motivated to defend all those titles when other teams began targeting the Razorbacks, "especially Texas." When Arkansas moved to the SEC in 1991 after dominating the old SWC, he said he remembered one coach saying, 'They've left that Mickey Mouse conference and now they've come to a real conference."

"I made him eat those words," McDonnell remembered, smiling. "Our first conference meet, we had a perfect score (in cross country)."

In fact, from '91 through 2007, Arkansas won all but six SEC team titles.

He said the first national championship always meant the most, but a trip to the White House for his team to be honored by President Bill Clinton when Arkansas set the record for most national championships was another highlight.

"To open up those double doors and see all those senators and congressmen calling the Hogs," he said. "That's a long way from the dairy in County Mayo."

Also Thursday, the Arkansas Sports Club presented a check to the Salvation Army as its end-of-the-year charitable donation. Memberships for 2009 are available for $30. Contact Mike Harrison at (501) 733-8411 or mharr18745@aol.com.

The next meeting of the Arkansas Sports Club will be Monday, Jan. 12 with Joe Dillard, retired Greenbrier basketball coach, as the featured speaker. The meal will begin at 11:30 a.m. with the program to follow at 12:05.