, a commanding presence and an unwavering vision to resurrect a moribund program. Four years later, with Dwyer as the driving force, Manhattan claimed an NCAA title with homegrown athletes in a track version of David versus Goliath.
Manhattan, a private Catholic school on a tiny 22-acre campus in the Bronx, had had moments of glory on the oval since its inception in 1912. As an undergraduate, Lindy Remigino sped to the gold medal in the 100m dash and earned a second gold in the 400m relay at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952. Four years later, Lou Jones, a former world record-holder in the 400m and a 1954 graduate, was a member of the 1600m relay that grabbed gold at the Melbourne Olympics.
Dwyer, however, was searching for more than an occasional shooting star. Manhattan had not garnered a major team title since the IC4A indoor championships in 1956. He wanted to build a consistently strong program. And in the track world, he was a rarity, having achieved considerable success both as a runner and a coach.
In the early 1950s, Dwyer had established himself as the first in a long line of great milers under Villanova coach Jim “Jumbo” Elliott. Other milers of that era, such as Wes Santee of Kansas, were more talented, but none was as relentless in the pursuit of excellence as the 5-foot-8, 135-pound Dwyer, known as the “Mighty Mite.” His resume as a competitor included a PR of 4:00.80 in the mile and fourth place in the 1500 at the 1956 Olympic trial in Los Angeles.
Dwyer also had a combative streak, and it was on prominent display during the Wanamaker Mile in the 1955 Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden. While Denmark’s Gunnar Nielsen was setting a world indoor record, Santee grabbed at Dwyer as he tried to pass on the inside, and the two spun in a circle on the final straightaway before a stunned audience. Dwyer, disqualified for his illegal inside pass, proclaimed to reporters after the race, “I can still beat them both.” The next week, in the Baxter Mile at the Garden, the pugnacious Dwyer did just that.
Dwyer began his coaching career at Essex Catholic High School in Newark, N.J., in 1962. There, he gained national recognition in 1967, training future Olympian Marty Liquori to become the third high school runner to break 4 minutes in the mile. Dwyer coached as he had competed: equal parts passion, intensity, discipline and swagger. He had little tolerance for recalcitrance or lack of commitment.
His first, and perhaps wisest, decision at Manhattan was to select Frank “Gags” Gagliano, the coach at archrival Roselle Catholic, as his assistant. Gagliano was as fiercely competitive as Dwyer, and legend has it that they once had to be separated during an altercation at a high school indoor meet at the 168th Street Armory in New York. Dwyer knew that Gagliano had the motivation to raise the standard. “We were both young and eager,” Dwyer says.
Gagliano was hired part-time at Manhattan while working full-time at Sacred Heart High School in Yonkers as a PE coach and a driver’s education instructor. He commuted 70 minutes one way from New Jersey in a 1964 Chevy station wagon with broken seats and with a frequent need for repair. But he was grateful to Dwyer for the college coaching opportunity.
Dwyer and Gagliano, both in their 30s, made an odd couple. An Army veteran, Dwyer was demanding and confrontational when athletes gave less than their best. Gagliano, a stocky quarterback and javelin thrower at the University of Richmond, was warm and affectionate, embracing athletes in a bear hug.
“I was a taskmaster, because I was trying to squeeze the best out of them,” Dwyer says. “Having been there myself and having had a degree of success, I knew what was required.” Gagliano displayed a deft balancing act, loyal to Dwyer yet concerned about the athletes. “He would be the disciplinarian, big-time, and then I would come in and soothe it a little bit,” Gagliano says.
Dwyer’s first recruiting class in 1970 was by far the most outstanding in his 24-year tenure. He landed the top-ranked high school distance runners in the nation that year in Power Memorial’s Tony Colon, who ran 4:06.0 in the mile and Essex Catholic’s Mike Keogh, who notched a 8:54.0 in the 2 mile. For good measure, he snagged Roselle Catholic’s Joe Savage, whose 1:50.1 in the half-mile ranks in the high school top 10 all-time at the Penn Relays.
Dwyer now possessed the thoroughbreds, but obstacles abounded. He started with a meager $12,000 annual operating budget with which to recruit, buy green and white uniforms and pay for meals for the athletes who stayed behind during Christmas and Easter holidays. As a result, the majority of athletes hailed from within a 60-mile radius.
Manhattan College boasted no track facilities of its own at the time. Van Cortlandt Park, a stone’s throw to the east on Broadway and the site of the NCAA cross country championships in 1968 and ’69, was its home course. Manhattan also took advantage of the park’s cinder track in the fall and spring. In the winter, the track athletes ran on a discarded wooden Madison Square Garden track they assembled themselves up the street at Riverdale Country School. They wore long johns, ski caps and gloves and shoveled snow off the icy track before running intervals. “That’s the way we survived in the East,” Gagliano says.
A few years later, Riverdale Country School needed the land, and the track team was displaced. Manhattan found a temporary home at Columbia University’s Baker Field, where a bubble was inflated over a wooden, 11-lap banked track in the winter. The athletes jogged 1 1/2 miles to Baker Field, worked out at 6 p.m., and jogged back to campus, with Dwyer sometimes honking at them in his car to quicken the pace. By the time they showered and reached the dining hall, cold food awaited them.
“The circumstances we had to work under, it’s amazing that they did what they did,” Dwyer says. “That’s where my heart goes out to the kids. That’s why they were extra special.”
By 1972, predawn 5- to 10-mile runs, often in sub-freezing weather, followed by afternoon interval training, had only strengthened the athletes’ resolve. Although they grew up in the U.S., Keogh (5,000m) and Colon (1500m) competed for Ireland and Puerto Rico, respectively, in the Munich Olympics. In the fall, Keogh placed seventh and the team took ninth at the NCAA cross country meet in Houston. These accomplishments set the stage for the indoor season. At the IC4A indoor meet in Princeton, N.J., on the first weekend in March of 1973, Manhattan captured the title with 45 points, almost doubling runner-up Navy with 24.
A week later, the Jaspers flew to Detroit to compete in the NCAA indoor track championships at Cobo Arena. The two-day meet beginning March 9 attracted 105 colleges and 420 athletes, including 1972 Olympic champions Dave Wottle of Bowling Green and Rod Milburn of Southern University. USC, the defending champion, and UTEP, a rising power, were among the favorites. Manhattan flew under everyone’s radar. Dwyer had an inkling that Manhattan wouldn’t be anonymous for long. “The kids were hungry, and they were prepared,” Dwyer says.
Like Dwyer, Colon had some swagger himself. “When we got on that plane, there was no doubt in any of our minds that we were going to win,” says Colon, 60, who runs 35 miles a week and ran a 5:09 mile at age 55. “We knew that we were that good. That was our mindset.”
Sophomore Ken McBryde opened Manhattan’s scoring on Friday, leaping 52-feet,1 1/2 inches on his sixth and final attempt in the triple jump for third place. (Scoring was 6-4-3-2-1.)
Before more than 9,000 spectators, Keogh toed the line in the 2 mile against a talented field that included Wottle, who had placed third in a preliminary heat of the mile an hour earlier. (Dwyer’s strategy, in contrast, was to limit his athletes to one event each to keep their legs fresh.) The runners went through the first mile in a pedestrian 4:27. At that point, Wisconsin’s Glenn Herold pushed the pace, Keogh recalls, “knowing that there was no way that we could continue on that line and let Wottle take over.” Keogh followed Herold, passing him in the final 300 yards and winning comfortably in 8:38.7. The second mile was a torrid 4:11 under which a tired Wottle “couldn’t hold up.”
On Saturday, Manhattan entered the final of the distance medley relay before more than 10,000 spectators after qualifying with the fastest time. Running the leadoff half-mile in 1:53.2, senior John Lovett handed off the baton in second behind UTEP’s Hollie Walton. Freshman Ray Johnson ran 50.4 in the quarter-mile as Manhattan slipped to fourth but stayed within striking distance. Savage, 6-foot-3 with long blond hair, quickly made up the deficit and ran one of the best races of his career, blazing the three-quarter leg in 2:55.9.
“I went out at a very nice clip, and it was easy to sustain it,” recalls Savage, who, as a freshman, led the first half-mile against Jim Ryun and Liquori in the “Dream Mile” in 1971 in Philadelphia (which Liquori won in 3:54.6). “I had no problem, and I had no competition.”
Colon, the anchor, had a comfortable lead on the exchange, but he never coasted, running the relay’s fastest mile in 4:04.3. A photo in the Detroit News the next day showed Colon, with his trademark horseshoe mustache, crossing the finish line with his arms lifted high and his mouth agape in a “yell.” Manhattan won by almost 5 seconds in a world-record time of 9:43.8 on an 11-lap banked track. The announcer called the foursome back on the track for a victory lap. They looked like a “rag-tag band of guys,” Savage recalls. “Not one of our uniforms matched. Our coaches were mortified.”
Cliff Bruce, another top recruit from 1970, completed Manhattan’s scoring with a third-place finish in the 1,000y in 2:10.7. After the mile run and the mile relay, the announcer declared Manhattan the meet winner with 18 points. Dwyer’s strategy had worked to perfection. The Jaspers had scored in only four events, but it was more than enough. UTEP, Kent State and Kansas tied for second with 12. Surrounded by Manhattan athletes, Dwyer stood grinning on the podium with the team trophy in a “state of euphoria.”
“They performed,” Gagliano says. “I mean, they performed.”
In light of the lack of training facilities and small budget, Dwyer calls the victory a “miracle.”
Dwyer had the vision, but the athletes accomplished it through a tenacious work ethic and sacrifice. “Frank and I were able to communicate our goals to the kids,” Dwyer says. “They bought into it. And you saw the end result.”
With an undergraduate enrollment of about 2,800 in 1973, Manhattan remains the smallest college ever to win an NCAA Division I track title.
“The smallest college, the smallest budget,” Dwyer says.
After the meet, Elliott, the great coach, congratulated Dwyer, his first great miler. However, a few days later, Elliott telephoned Dwyer miffed. An article with a quote from Dwyer about his athletes had appeared in a newspaper: “I’m proud of the fact that they’re all Americans.” Because Elliott had foreign athletes on his team, he “interpreted it as a shot across the bow,” Dwyer says.
Never promoted to full-time status at Manhattan, Gagliano departed for Rutgers in 1974 and for Georgetown in 1984. His Hoyas finished second at the NCAA indoor meet in 1991. He retired from the collegiate ranks in 2001 and went on to work as a Nike elite coach, first in California and then in Oregon. Gagliano, who turns 76 in March, returned to New Jersey in 2009 and founded the New Jersey-New York Track Club, training elite runners on the East coast. Retirement is not in his vocabulary.
Dwyer retired in 1993 with four IC4A titles and the college’s only NCAA title. At 81, he plays golf two or three times a week near his home in Caldwell, N.J.
Manhattan College hasn’t scaled the mountaintop again. But 40 years ago, Dwyer and Gagliano defied the odds, proving that an upstart college with homegrown athletes could topple the track powerhouses.
Jim Irish, Manhattan ’74, is a runner and writer who lives outside Augusta, Ga.
