Track & Field Program Has Produced Seven National Champions

It’s not easy to become a national champion. Stockton’s track and field program has nurtured seven in its history, each making their mark on their sport and on Stockton. Four of them won two national championships apiece for a total of 11 NCAA titles in school history.

Todd Curll has been a track and field coach at Stockton University for more than 25 years and is in his 19th season as the head women’s track and field coach. He had the pleasure of coaching Stockton’s first female NCAA Division III Champion, Kim Marino Kryscnski. 

Marino Kryscnski was the first to clear 13 feet at an NCAA Division III championship meet, vaulting 13’ 1¾” at the 2003 NCAA Division III Outdoor Championships. She won the indoor title that year as well. A gymnast, she had dabbled in pole vault against boys in high school, then was recruited at Stockton by coach Bill Preston, who saw her wearing a gymnastics t-shirt.

“Kim is my pride and joy,” Curll said. “She was my first (NCAA champion) as a coach. She was a (five)-time All-American. She held the Division III national record for eight years. She was amazing. To this day, we’re still very good friends. She impresses me every day still to this day. How she grows, what she put in, her hard work. It’s the above and beyond; the intangibles.”

“A lot of hard work kind of paid off,” said Marino Kryscnski, ’04, now a teacher in Hightstown, who was inducted into Stockton’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 2010. “Every single time I won anything, Todd Curll deserves more credit than I do without a doubt. I’ve said that every single time.”

Stockton has a long history of excelling in track and field. The late G. Larry James spent more than three decades at Stockton as a coach, athletics director and dean and was a positive force in shaping the sports programs, which were club teams when the two-time 1968 U.S. Olympic track medalist arrived on campus.

In addition to Marino Kryscnski, the six others who won NCAA Division III individual titles are: Paul Lewis (1981 outdoor 400 meters); Greg Foster (1988 indoor long jump and triple jump); Mike Mielke (1986 outdoor discus); Tiffany Masuhr (2005 outdoor javelin); Paul Klemic (2005 and 2006 outdoor long jump) and Jared Lewis (2017 and 2018 indoor triple jump). Mielke, Masuhr and Klemic are also in the Athletics Hall of Fame.

“The success of the program begins with the foundation that was established by Coach (Dave) Pfeifer and Coach (Bill) Preston during their time as the head coaches,” said Jayson Resch, Stockton’s director of cross country/track and field. “Both of them helped athletes prepare for the next level in competition and pushed each athlete to new heights.”

“Coach Curll and Coach Kev (Kevin Chandler) are truly the backbone of the program and their commitment to the individual development of each athlete is the main ingredient for establishing the consistency of the years.” 

“Personally, it gives me great pleasure to see athletes achieving their goals and I love watching them improve over the four years,” Resch said. “I have the privilege of being part of their experience as a collegiate student-athlete and watching them mature into adults who are preparing for life. Seeing them grow into leaders and using track and field as the platform for that growth is a one of the best parts of the job."

Mike Mielke is now a Command Sergeant Major (CSM) in the U.S. Army, stationed in South Carolina and has served for three decades. The 1986 Stockton grad earned five track and field All-American honors in throwing events from 1984-86. He transferred to Division III Stockton from Division I LaSalle University after things didn’t work out there. Dave Pfeifer, who was the head coach at Stockton at the time, had coached Mielke at Holy Spirit High School.

“It was strange the way it worked out,” Mielke recalled. “I thought I was going to win the national title in 1985. There were six rounds of throwing and I led for five rounds. A guy came back and got me by about 10 inches. That was Tom Newberry who was a second-round draft choice out of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for the NFL. He was a Pro Bowler and played in the Super Bowl for the Pittsburgh Steelers and played 10 years in the NFL. What was interesting about that era, there was Division I talent in Division III. It was a different caliber of athlete back then”.

When Mielke won it the next year, he “was a little disappointed that I didn’t throw as far as I could have but I was happy for the win. It was really a stepping stone for something bigger, which was the Olympic Trials. It was a great feeling (winning the NCAAs). I was proud to represent Stockton. I was happy for my coach because we had been through so much together, but for me, I’d no sooner won it and my mind was onto another goal.

“Sport was nothing more than a springboard for something much more profound which was service to the nation,” Mielke said. “I’m thankful I was an athlete. I learned a tremendous amount out of it. The Army is really my calling."

Jared Lewis, also an All-American at Stockton, has excelled off the field as well. He spent several seasons as an assistant men’s track and field/cross country coach at Arcadia University and recently left for a position where he’ll be doing cyber insurance. After graduating from Stockton, he received his master’s degree in sports management at California University of Pennsylvania and was a graduate assistant for track and field/cross country there before Arcadia.

 “It was a great time,” Lewis said of his time at Stockton. “It was great to have that experience. The team was amazing. A lot of my best friends are actually from the team. Being able to travel with the coaches and other athletes that qualified for national championships and just the time and dedication it took to be able to compete at that high level is something that I reflect on.”

Lewis said his second championship was actually a better feeling than the first. “It took so much to win that, being that I was pretty banged up with injury that would later affect me in my outdoor season, so to be able to fight through that, to have both my head coach Jayson Resch and my jumps coach Todd Curll there, it made it definitely a better feeling,” Lewis said.

Curll said Lewis was always a lot of fun and loved to talk. “He was a very talented young man. He fought through some injuries…He’s the kind of kid, same thing, when he wanted something, he went after it.”

Curll said he is just as proud of his athletes’ accomplishments off the field. “I’ve kind of prided myself on it being kind of a culture,” said Curll, “…We’re not a school with scholarship athletes but we expect our athletes to come in and give everything and work hard and the ones that become these national champions are the ones that did it the best….Yeah, they’re national champions but they’re doing well in their lives and they’re succeeding in the things they’re trying. Makes me really happy.”