Some people just don't take no for an answer.
Former Penn track Coach Irv Mondschein was one of those people, and Penn has been all the better for it.
Twenty-three years ago, Mondschein went to hire a young, up-and-coming track and field coach named Charlie Powell to be his assistant at Penn. Powell, then the head track coach at the University of Delaware, had a quick answer to the proposal -- "No."
But Powell was not prepared for what would happen next.
"The next morning, 8 or 8:30 in the morning, there's a knock on my door, and it's Irv Mondschein," Powell recalls. "He tells me he won't take 'no' for an answer."
Mondschein convinced Powell to wait until he visited Penn to make his decision. The visit helped clear up some of Powell's misconceptions. He had only known Penn from the veritable circus it turned into around the Penn Relays, and his experience as a Yale recruit led him to think that "snootiness" was pervasive across the Ancient Eight. Nothing a little stroll down Locust Walk couldn't fix.
"I was like, 'Wow, these are real people here [at Penn].' I couldn't believe it."
Impressed by the friendly people, the beauty of the campus and Fairmount Park's 42 miles of track, Powell soon came around and signed on as an assistant. After he helped lead the Quakers to the 1984 Heptagonal Indoor Championships, Powell succeeded Mondschein as head coach in 1988 and proceeded to make Penn into one of the top track programs in the country.
But this is not the way the story was supposed to go. Charlie Powell was a football player at Virginia Tech, an architecture major with a safe desk job and a planned future in front of him. But Powell never did cross the finish line of graduate school. He transferred to Western Kentucky University to focus solely on the sport he loved, track and field.
Why the sudden change of direction? Unfortunately, tragedy played a big part in his decision to focus on track. Powell lost both his father and a close friend around this time, events which left him shaken and unsure of his future.
"I started doing some soul searching and found out what I thought I wanted to do was not what I wanted to do," Powell recalls. "Football at the Division I level was not a fun sport for me. ... They were telling me I couldn't take certain classes, I couldn't do certain things. I just got tired, I wanted some control of my life."
A coach who had recruited Powell out of high school for track lured him to Western Kentucky to run for the Hilltoppers. Powell emerged as a star there, qualifying for the NCAA Championships in the hurdles and the decathlon. But injuries cut his career short, which left Powell once again at the crossroads.
Western Kentucky had just hired a new track coach from Colorado, who came into the strong program with little knowledge about the schools against which he would be competing and the area in which he would be recruiting. So he sought someone who knew the area well, someone who knew the conference, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each opponent. That someone was Powell.
"From there on, I never looked back."
Building Penn into one of the top programs in the country was not easy. The University already had the tradition and allure of Franklin Field, but facilities don't recruit kids, coaches do. One aspect Powell found especially difficult was recruiting the necessary depth you needed to succeed at the Division I level.
"In track and field, you have 18 events," Powell says. "To be really successful, you have to cover all your bases."
Furthermore, strict admission standards in the Ivy League do not make Powell's job any easier.
"We're looking for a needle in the haystack," Powell says on the difficulty of finding smart and talented athletes. "Recruiting here is about 10 times harder than any place I've ever been."
But reputation quickly became Powell's ally. Word soon spread across the country, not only about the strength of Penn's program, but of its ability to produce fine young men with great educations. After all, professional track is not a very viable career option to most college athletes.
"Getting young people and their parents to believe in you ... that's one of the hardest things," Powell says. "Once that starts going, then it becomes easier."
This will be Powell's 24th Penn Relays, an event that one of his colleagues once dubbed the "Woodstock of Track and Field" (If you're wondering, Powell was not at Woodstock -- he had a track meet). But after all these years, the carnival atmosphere has certainly not lost any magic for the coach.
"It's a celebration of our sport," Powell says. "Everything from the little kids who are running shuttle relays on the infield to the Olympic champions who come to this track, and everything in between. It's just everyone getting together for a wonderful weekend."
Powell's achievements are impressive. He has coached his way to five Heptagonal team championships, over 100 individual Heptagonal gold medalists, 22 Heptagonal relay championship teams, two NCAA champions and countless more All-Ivy, All-Eastern and All-American athletes.
Aside from his duties at Penn, Powell finds time to work as the 800-meter chair for the Olympic Developmental Committee. But these achievements are but secondary to what Powell considers most important: the impact that he has on his athletes' lives.
Powell has created a family atmosphere at Penn, one that comes back to the "father." He once received an early morning phone call from one of his former runners, Dave Hawks, who called from the delivery room about the birth of his son. Another former athlete told Powell that, other than his father, the coach had been the most influential man in his young life.
Coaches "have that opportunity to actually touch peoples' lives and help them reach their goals," Powell said. "Sometimes when you think about it, it kind of freaks you out and blows you away, but it makes you pretty damn proud too."
So it seems Powell's journey has come full circle. The man who was driven down this path partly by the death of his father and close friend has become exactly that -- a father figure and companion -- to all the athletes he has coached.
And what does the future hold for the coach who at first did not want to come here?
"I've been offered a couple nice situations at some very good schools, some very good track programs. But I'm not leaving -- this is a wonderful place to be."
Funny how quickly people change.
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