As a talented sprinter coming out of Manchester Township High School in the early 1980s, Andrew Valmon had dreams of making the U.S. junior national track team in the 400 meters.
During his first year at Seton Hall University, Valmon’s college track coach tested just how badly he wanted it.
John Moon put Valmon through a workout regimen that was practically unheard of for sprinters that era (and probably rare, still, today): four 600-meter repeats, with very little rest in between.
“I did a lot of throwing up,” Valmon recalled. “He tried to convince me that (workout) was normal. I thought that was abnormal; people don’t run 600s when they’re racing one lap. But it worked, I’ve got to say. I didn’t like it, but it made me tougher and it made me better.”
Valmon made the junior national team, ran in the junior world championship, and “I saw what track could do for your life,” he recalled. He became a two-time Olympic gold medalist, taking part in the winning 4×400 at the Seoul and Barcelona Games, and later served as head coach of the U.S. Olympic track and field team at the 2012 London Olympiad. For the past two decades he’s been head of the track program at the University of Maryland.
“Coach Moon has been a game-changer for a lot of people in this sport,” Valmon said Friday, after Seton Hall announced Moon’s impending retirement from a career that spanned 53 years in South Orange. “The biggest thing was his stability. That’s what made things successful – because he was there for the long haul. Nowadays a coach might be someplace for five years. He put stability in that program, so you knew if you went there, what the end result was going to be.”
The results, for Moon were incredible: 19 Olympians, seven NCAA champions, 71 All-Americans. His program captured six Big East team titles (four on the men’s side, two on the women’s side) and finished as high as third at the NCAA Championships.
All of this at a small, private college in a cold-weather climate with no outdoor track facilities (his teams trained down the road at Columbia High School’s Underhill Field, and on the campus’ 200-meter indoor track).
“He made it about the opportunity as opposed to what we didn’t have,” Valmon said. “We had a bubble (indoor) track that was wooden boards. Obviously it wasn’t safe. When I look back on it, I can’t believe it. But the way we had to train, we had to be mentally tough.”
A program built with a promise
Moon emerged on the track & field scene as an elite sprinter at Linden High School and ran collegiately at Tennessee State, where he was roommates with future New York Knicks guard and NBA champion Dick Barnett. He started coaching at Seton Hall in 1972 and, although his reputation eventually grew to the point where he could have coached anywhere, he never left his home state.
“First of all, I’m from New Jersey, and Seton Hall didn’t put any demands on me: You have to win this, you have to win that,” said Moon, 86, who lives in Franklin. “And then Seton Hall just grew on me because I was building something. I became obsessed: I knew we could compete with the big-time schools.”
Building his program around quarter-milers and mining athlete-rich New Jersey for recruits, his Pirates kept pace with not only Big East brand names Georgetown and Villanova, but the traditional southern powerhouses who had the benefit of year-round mild weather to train in.
“You don’t know how much time I spent getting people to buy into Seton Hall,” Moon said. “My thing was: I’m going to guarantee you’re going to graduate. That’s what I told the parents. I can’t guarantee you’re going to break a world record, but I guarantee you’re going to graduate.”
Just about all of his charges did, and many of them, like Valmon, went on to become teachers and coaches.
“That was my reward,” Moon said.
The capstone to his legacy came this past summer when American Noah Lyles won the Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter dash. Lyles is the son of Kevin Lyles and Keisha Caine, both of whom were All-American sprinters for Seton Hall in the 1990s.
“Can you imagine? His mother and father met on my team,” Moon said. “I used to tell them in a joking manner, ‘When you guys have kids they’re going to be Olympic champions.’ And look what happened. I’m so proud of both of them.”
A high, a low, and a piece of advice
Although he missed out on the 1964 Olympics as a sprinter after suffering an ill-timed injury, Moon realized his own Olympic dream by becoming the sprint coach of the U.S. squad for the 2000 Games in Sydney.
“When I walked into the stadium wearing red, white and blue, I was in tears,” he recalled.
In Sydney Moon was in charge of the relays, and to this day, his men’s 4×100 unit remains the last American quartet to win gold in that event. Every four years since, the U.S. men’s 4×100 has failed spectacularly, usually because of botched handoffs.
“How did we do it? I was a nuisance with them – they got tired of seeing me,” he said of the relay members. “We practiced, practiced, practiced. Now you’ve got these prima donnas who don’t want to practice that baton exchange, and you have these personal coaches and agents who dictate what’s going on. When I was in Sydney, I wouldn’t even allow them on the field.”
The lone lowlight of Moon’s coaching life came in 2010, when Seton Hall eliminated its track & field programs out of the blue, even though they were still racking up titles. Moon has remained with the school as the cross country coach, but his specialty was gone.
“We had some athletic administrators here at that time who didn’t know what they were doing,” he said. “Look: Seton Hall is basketball. But other schools have high-echelon basketball and high-echelon other sports programs. Why can’t Seton Hall?”
As he rides off into the sunset, what advice does Moon have for today’s college and high school coaches?
“You’ve got to be understanding and make kids like you, but at the same time, be able to kick their tail if you have to,” he said. “You’ve got to be a father. You may be a father at home, but you’ve got to be a father on the field, too.”
From time to time, other track coaches ask to see Moon’s workout logs, and he’s always willing to share them, with a caveat. Those 600-meter workouts that turned Andrew Valmon’s stomach? Thinking them up was only half of the job.
“Sure, I can give you these workouts, but they’re just workouts,” he said. “You’ve got to make them believe they can do it.”
Author’s note: Jerry Carino was a member of Seton Hall’s track & field program from 1991-1993.
Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.
