A glorious past and uncertain future for men's track and field

Coaching challenges are nothing new to Andrew Valmon.

When he took over the Terrapins men's and women's track and field teams in 2003, charged with revitalizing a once-powerful program that captured the last of its 29 ACC Championships three decades ago, he had only two scholarships for the men's team.

In February, Valmon was named men's coach of the U.S. Olympic team for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. There, he's supposed to bring Team USA back to international prominence after Jamaica's run of dominance in 2008.

But after a Nov. 21 announcement by university President Wallace Loh to accept the recommendations of the President's Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and cut eight varsity teams, Valmon may be facing his toughest challenge yet.

In conjunction with the acrobatics and tumbling team, $9.5 million must be raised by June 30 to save the men's cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field teams from elimination.

"At this point for us now, the focus is on fundraising and turning the corner and trying to turn what we perceive as a negative into a positive," Valmon said. "Our kids have been resilient for so many years."

The response to the cuts has been swift inside the traditionally tight-knit track and field community. A Facebook group in support of the teams was created and boasted more than 13,500 members as of yesterday afternoon. Olympians Bernard Lagat, Tyson Gay and Lolo Jones have tweeted in support of the program as well.

In an editorial posted on RunningMaryland.com, a website dedicated to the sport's goings on in the state, former Terps cross country and track team member Greg Jubb wrote that after seeing the news, he felt "like [he] had just read the obituary of a close friend."

"It's very much a minority sport," Jubb said last week. "We're kind of bundled together because it's a sport that doesn't get much press coverage. It doesn't get much looks from the average person in the nation. If the program were cut, a lot of people really aren't going to care. … By nature, we form this tight-knit group because that's what it takes to keep morale high and keep the spirit of track and field alive."

Brad Jaeger, who competed for the Terps in the 1970s and now is the director of Running Maryland, sees the track and field program as vital to the university. Seventeen of the 28 athletes on the roster are from this state, giving the team a more local flavor than many other varsity programs.

Valmon has fostered a family environment, Jaeger said, by concentrating on in-state recruiting, convincing some runners to join the program despite not being offered scholarships. Some of the top high school talent in Maryland often leaves the state for full-scholarship offers elsewhere, and Jaeger likened Valmon's efforts to creating a farm system.

"I'm proud of the coaches for sticking to the way they want to build the team instead of going out to Kenya and Ethiopia and bringing runners in," Jaeger said. "The way they are building the team is the way the taxpayers would want the team to be built."

In recent years, many viewed the Terps as a team on the rise. While it would take a massive overhaul to return the Terps to the form they had from 1951 to 1981, when they won 29 of 31 ACC Championships, smaller strides were being made.

Former sprinter Dominic Berger and jumper Dwight Barbiasz both earned All-America honors in the past five years, the first Terps to earn such an honor since 1987.

While the results at conference championships don't reflect the improvement — the Terps have finished no higher than seventh in the ACC during Valmon's tenure — Jubb said the team's small roster size makes it hard for the team to overcome injuries during the course of a season.

In less than a year, however, the program that at one point produced former world record-holder Renaldo Nehemiah could be no more. Valmon is nonetheless confident his team can handle the adversity facing it this season and beyond.

"I feel strongly that a lot of the kids are going to step up to the challenge and do what they do best, which is go to school, get good grades, prepare themselves for the upcoming season and let the fundraising aspect of it go into the hands of fundraisers," said Valmon, whose team has been awarded the President's Cup, an award given to the team with the highest grade-point average, in five of the past 15 years.

"At this point, once the initial shock and the anger and everything else settled down, I think the focus for them is getting ready for their exams and getting ready to have a season, no matter what the outcome's going to be."

On July 1, when the program's fate is decided, Valmon will be almost 3,000 miles away in Eugene, Ore., putting the finishing touches on the Team USA he plans to take to London. As soon as Valmon finalizes one of his teams, he could lose the other.

USA Track and Field spokeswoman Jill Geer called the Terps' situation a "special concern" for track's national governing body because of Valmon's position of national prominence and the program's rich history. The continued cutting of collegiate track and field programs, Geer said, could have implications at the international level.

"Many sports that are contested at the Olympic Games rely on the collegiate system as essentially our training ground for a lot of our athletes," Geer said. "The NCAA certainly has no obligation to train future Olympic athletes, but the fact of the matter is that most of the athletes you see competing at the World Championship level or the Olympic level come up through the collegiate system."