Former VU Coach Tim Marsee to be inducted into NJCAA Hall of Fame

VINCENNES, Ind. – The NJCAA Track and Field Coaches Association announced the members of their 2023 Hall of Fame class, which includes former VU Assistant Coach Tim Marsee and three-time NJCAA National Champion pole vaulter Matteo Capello (Turino, Italy).

“Being inducted into the NJCAA Track and Field Hall of Fame is one of the highest honors you can get as a coach,” Marsee said. “To be voted in by your peers and people that recognize your accomplishments were worthy enough to be in the Hall of Fame is pretty cool.”

“When I found out that I had been nominated to go in, I was kind of taken back by it because I didn’t know if I had enough qualifications for this honor,” Marsee added.

Marsee was named NJCAA National Meet Assistant Men’s Coach of the Year three times, the men’s Atlantic Division Assistant Coach of the Year three times and the National Meet Assistant Women’s Coach of the Year twice, working under former VU Head Coach Chris Gafner.

In 2018, Marsee was also named the men’s and women’s Atlantic Division Coach of the Year and the Region 24 Men’s Head Coach of the Year.

Marsee worked with several high-level athletes while at Vincennes University. His athletes earned 87 All-American honors, 71 All-Time top-five VU School records, including 21 VU school record holders, five National Meet record holders and four NJCAA National records.

Marsee’s athletes also finished as National Runner-Up 12 times and earned 21 individual National Championships at Vincennes University, including working with two NJCAA Hall of Fame Athletes in Natalia Bartnovskaya, who was inducted in 2019 and Matteo Capello, who will be inducted alongside Marsee.

“Working with Natalia and Matteo was great,” Marsee said. “I helped those two achieve some goals of theirs and they went on to be National Champions and National Meet record holders. But one thing that I am most proud of is I have had about six or seven athletes from Indiana and Illinois that have gone on to win National Championships and several more that have been All-Americans, my son included, that were anywhere from exceptional to average athletes in high school.”

“Being able to help develop those kids to be able to achieve those high-level goals of being Champions, that’s probably one of the things I am most proud of,” Marsee added. “Being able to work with those kids and helping them achieve goals that they maybe didn’t know were possible has been really special.”

“Going into the Hall of Fame with Matteo is nice,” Marsee said. “Matteo was such a great athlete. When he got here, his big goal was to try to get over 18 feet as a pole vaulter and he was able to accomplish that. Along the way he set some National records and won three National Championships. He would have won four, but the 2020 Outdoor meet was cancelled due to COVID.”

“My first National Champion I worked with was Natalia,” Marsee added. “She was a lot of fun to work with. She won her event at the National meet on a Friday and Ryan Smith won his event the next day and those were my first two athletes to win National titles. The work ethic with those kids was tremendous and Matteo, he just worked and worked. We constantly communicated on what he needed to fix and kept trying to reach those goals and it finally ended up paying off in the end. It’s pretty cool to go into the Hall of Fame at the same time as an athlete that you coached.”

“I still follow some of the athletes that I coached that are still competing,” Marsee said. “I also still follow VU and look at the results every weekend. I get to talk to Coach Marty Rogier every now and then and he’s working on building the program up. I think he and Coach Tyler are doing a great job.”

“As a coach, you never want to see the program go down,” Marsee added. “You want to see the program continue to build and go forward and I believe that’s happening at VU. You always want the program to succeed and they are.”

Marsee got his start in coaching Track and Field at nearby South Knox high school, where he helped guide the Spartans to back-to-back Sectional Championships.

“Several years ago, my daughter was a middle school track athlete at South Knox,” Marsee said. “I went by one day to pick her up from practice and she was out there trying to high jump. Nobody was over there trying to work with her, so I went over and started working with her on the high jump. Then some other kids came up and started asking me questions, so I started trying to help them. The next year they asked me if I wanted to coach middle school track.”

“So, I did and we had some success, then the high school coach Bob Swank retired and I became the high school coach,” Marsee added. “We had some success on the high school team and won back-to-back Sectionals, won some Conference titles and had some really good athletes and then Chris Gafner approached me about coming to help at VU. I came to VU, first on a part-time basis and then became a full-time assistant, while still maintaining my regular job at South Knox.”

“Chris and I developed a great relationship and without him, none of this would be possible,” Marsee said. “I started to learn some things about Track and Field that I needed to get better on and things just kind of took off from there. But Chris and I worked really well together and he gets a lot of the credit for this honor.”

Marsee joins Trailblazer Track and Field Hall of Famers Jeff Phillips, who was inducted in 1991 and finished third in the 200 meters at the 1982 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships and former VU Head Track and Field Coach Bill Smith who was inducted in 2021, along with the previously mentioned Bartnovskaya and Capello.

“I think the Track program at Vincennes University is finally starting to receive some of the recognition that it has deserved over several years,” Marsee said. “There have been a lot of very good coaches here. Chris Gafner did a tremendous job here. Those guys like Chris Gafner, Bill Smith, Art Cortez and Ben Johnson, who started the program back in the 1960’s. Those guys really developed the program and tried to take it to the highest level they could.”

“Each coach tried to reach higher and higher and even though we haven’t won a team National Championship in Track, which is extremely hard to do, those guys kept building the program better and better and tried to make it more competitive,” Marsee added. “Chris and I started the women’s track program. There have been some women’s athletes who have competed in track and field at VU, but there was never an official women’s team. So, he and I started the women’s program and it has really taken off and we’ve had some tremendous women’s athletes here over the years.”

When asked what it will be like to see his name up on the Hall of Fame banner that hangs in the P.E. Complex, Marsee said, “I don’t know. I think it’s going to be pretty emotional. It’s a great honor to be on that banner, so I think it’s going to be pretty emotional. It is now just thinking about it.”

Marsee will be inducted into the NJCAA Track and Field Hall of Fame at the 2023 NJCAA Division I Outdoor National Championship meet in Hobbs, N.M. Marsee is a member of the Class of 2023 alongside former VU pole vaulter and three-time NJCAA National Champion Matteo Capello, as well as Coach Tony Dougherty from New Mexico Junior College and Coach Jane Vatchev from the College of DuPage in Illinois.

The Vincennes University Athletic department would like to congratulate Coach Tim Marsee on this tremendous and well-deserved honor.