Dr. Jack Daniels Elected To National Hall Of Fame

Dr. Jack Daniels, the recently-retired cross country coach at Wells College, is part of the 2019 induction class of the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's (USTFCCCA) Coaches Hall of Fame.

Daniels will be one of six coaches honored at the 2019 USTFCCCA Convention in Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday, December 17.

Once dubbed the "world's best running coach" by Runner's World magazine, Daniels coached 24 individual national champions and more than 90 All-Americans at Cortland. After his tenure at Cortland, he served as head distance coach for Northern Arizona University's Center for High Altitude Training from 2005-09. 

Daniels has also penned multiple books on running and over 50 articles in scientific journals, in addition to numerous articles in popular magazines. His expertise has also served him as a featured speaker at national and international coaching clinics, running camps and training symposia. Daniels is also the namesake for the "Daniels Valve", utilized in numerous exercise physiology laboratories around the world.

A mainstay at numerous national cross country championships, Daniels has served as a Meet Director at 25 conference championships and annual invitational meets in both cross country and track and field. Serving as an Altitude consultant to the United States Olympic Team, he has also served as the Peruvian National Track Coach for one year.

Daniels is a 1955 graduate of the University of Montana. He earned a master's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1965 and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1969. He is a two-time Olympic team medalist in the modern pentathlon (horseback riding, epee, pistol, swimming, cross country running), earning a silver medal in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia and a bronze in the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Italy.

Daniels is a longtime coach at SUNY Cortland and a member of that institution's hall of fame. He led the men's cross country team for 17 seasons and the women's cross country team for 16 seasons during which the Cortland women's cross country team won seven national championships as a team and one second-place finish in the team standings.

Additionally, Daniels guided Cortland's women's indoor track and field team to a national title in 1991.

For more information, please visit the USTFCCCA website.