Thirty-four years. Twenty GLVC Championships.
One sport. One Team. One word. Dynasty.
Since the inception of the Great Lakes Valley Conference in 1978, the University of Southern Indiana’s men’s cross country team has won more conference championships than any other team in any other sport in league history.
This Saturday at Forest Park in St. Louis, Mo., the Screaming Eagles will compete for the 35th time in a GLVC Championship and will look for their 21st conference title, including their ninth straight. Should that feat occur, it would be the first time in league history that any team in any sport has won nine consecutive conference crowns.
For USI head coach Mike Hillyard, who has 10 GLVC Men’s Coach of the Year honors since 1998, those numbers are solely meant for records books. In fact, the only numbers he will ever talk about around his student-athletes are one and four.
“You can only win one year at a time, and these kids only have four opportunities in their career to be a part of it,” said Hillyard. “We don’t really ever talk about the streak or the number of titles at practice.  We simply take each day as it comes, and try to do our best to make the most of every opportunity to improve.”
Let’s be honest though. Rarely will coaches ever admit to focusing on streaks. If they begin to focus on something other than the next race, they know their student-athletes will too.
To some degree, that long line of conference championships does reside in a very small file in the back of Hillyard’s mind. But is has nothing to do with the idea of hoisting another trophy. It’s a responsibility to both his current team and all the decorated USI runners that have contributed to the success of the program.
As well as a former coach.
Hillyard, who took over the tradition-rich men’s program left by legendary USI and GLVC Hall of Fame Coach Bill Stegemoller, competed under the direction of his mentor in 1991, when he placed 34th at the 1991 NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships. He later earned a fifth-place result in the steeplechase at the 1992 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.
Any architect would tell you that no matter how high your project soars, it will crumble in an instant without a solid foundation.
“Steggy,” as he was affectionately referred to by his peers and runners, laid such a foundation when he started the USI program in 1979. During his tenure, which extended through the 1998 season, Stegemoller collected 12 GLVC championships including nine straight from 1979-1987. He coached six individual cross country champions and was voted GLVC Coach of the Year a record 12 times. His teams finished in the top three in the team standings at the GLVC Championships in each of his 20 years.
In March of 2007, Stegemoller passed away after a brief three-month battle with cancer. His death came just two months before he was inducted into the GLVC Hall of Fame.
So with all due respect to the current streak, it is that foundation on which and by whom this program was formed, that always keeps Hillyard focused moving forward.
“Like a lot of coaches, I have a fear of failure that keeps me pushing forward,” he said. “I don’t want to let the kids down. Certainly following in Bill’s footsteps, the bar was set pretty high from the outset. I do feel a sense of responsibility to maintain that.”
So far, so good.
The 20 GLVC Championships make up nearly 40 percent of USI’s conference-high 54 men’s league titles in all sports. Since 1996, seven Eagles have been named GLVC Athlete of the Year including the past two seasons in Michael Jordan (2012) and Brendan Devine (2011). The league’s top honor also goes to the individual champion, which included Paul Jellema in 2007, Joey Byrne in 2001 and 2002, and Elly Rono in 1996 and 1997. Rono went on to win the 1997 NCAA Division II Championship. Four other individual titles have been earned by USI, tying Lewis’ 11 first-place crowns for the most in conference history. Those four titles were earned by one man – James Nolan, who is the only runner in the past 34 years to win the conference meet all four seasons (1980-81-82-83).
Of note, the first non-USI runner to finish behind Nolan in the 1980 and 1981 meets was Jim Vargo, who has been Bellarmine University’s Director of Cross Country and Track and Field since the programs’ inception in 2000.
Looking back at the long list of names that have contributed to USI’s impressive men’s cross country list, Hillyard starts with Nolan, but takes pride in the fact that no two runners have come from similar backgrounds.
“We have been quite fortunate to have had several great runners come through our program,” Hillyard said. “Jim Nolan, the only four-time GLVC individual champion, was someone that I looked up to as a young athlete. Trent Nolan, his son, is now one our top runners. Elly Rono, Ben Kapsoiya, Joey Byrne, Paul Jellema, Dustin Emerick, Brendan Devine and Michael Jordan were all unique individuals with very different backgrounds and upbringings.  The one thing that they all have in common, however, is that each and every one of them went through a great deal of adversity along the way. I think that’s what separates champions from everyone else. Champions just keep getting back up.”
Prior to Hillyard’s first season as head coach of the men’s program, he had spent one year mentoring the Eagles’ women’s team. It did not take long for him to set their course to greatness.
Following a second-place finish at the GLVC Championships in his first year, Hillyard’s squad earned the 1998 and 1999 titles over the University of Wisconsin-Parkside – a team that would go on to beat out USI for the next three conference crowns.
Heading into this week, Southern Indiana owns seven women’s GLVC Championships, just one shy of UW-Parkside’s active-leading total of eight. Former GLVC member Ashland owns the conference record with nine women’s titles.
Of those seven titles in USI’s possession, four have come in the last five years as the Eagles earned the 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012 GLVC Championships.
Prior to the recent women’s dynasty, however, Hillyard is quick to point out the efforts of Heather Cooksey, who was a two-time GLVC Athlete of the Year in 2004 and 2005.
“Hands down, Heather Cooksey was the toughest and most talented athlete to have ever competed here at USI,” he said. “She and Jenny Farmer were two of the first great female distance runners here. Allie Shafer-Krieger, Mary Ballinger, Jackie Henderson, and now Erika Wilson have since followed in their footsteps.”
Shafer was the league’s Athlete of the Year in 2006, while Ballinger and Henderson earned the conference’s top honor in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Wilson is among the favorites to contend for the 2013 crown on Saturday as the reigning GLVC Runner of the Week currently holds the top 6,000-meter time in the conference this year (21:48.0)
“Most of (these ladies) had never even earned All-State honors in high school, and not one of them did during their senior year,” Hillyard recalled.
So what has been the secret to the success of the women’s program?
“The dynamics of coaching a successful women’s program is very different,” said Hillyard, a seven-time GLVC Women’s Coach of the Year. “Their desire to compete and succeed is no different, however. The men tend to come in with an overinflated idea of what they can become but have no game plan to get there. The women, more often than not, are realistic to a fault. The greatest joy of coaching is to see them achieve things that they never imagined being possible… and then dreaming of reaching new plateaus.”
Those plateaus, however, cannot be reached without a solid foundation.
Thirty-five years and a combined 27 GLVC Championships later, the University of Southern Indiana’s cross country programs have never been on better footing.
One word. Dynasty.
A dynasty that has gone the distance throughout the history of the GLVC.
Such events lead to calls for more school security and bans on guns and sometimes result in decisions that do littler more than just make us feel better.
