FAYETTEVILLE -- Niall O'Shaughnessy blazed a trail for the Arkansas cross country and track and field teams that have won a combined 41 NCAA championships.
"Niall lit the fire that started it all for us," said John McDonnell, who coached the Razorbacks to 40 national titles. "He was the man with the torch, and he helped us get red hot."
O'Shaughnessy, the first of 185 cross country and track and field All-Americans McDonnell coached from 1974 to 2008 before retiring, died Tuesday night at his home in suburban Atlanta after a two-year bout with brain cancer. He was 59.
While O'Shaughnessy didn't run for a national championship team while competing for the Razorbacks from the fall of 1973 through the spring of 1978, McDonnell and Frank O'Mara -- the 1981 NCAA winner in the 1,500 meters as an Arkansas senior -- said his impact is undeniable.
"I would say Niall is about 90 percent responsible for all the success of Arkansas track," said O'Mara, who like O'Shaughnessy came to the UA from Ireland. "Niall led the way for all us that came after him."
McDonnell said O'Shaughnessy "laid the foundation for our program" because of the national prestige he brought to Arkansas. He was inducted into the UA Sports Hall of Honor in 1994.
O'Shaughnessy ran the indoor mile in 3:55.40 in 1977 and made the cover of Track & Field News, which has long billed itself as "The Bible of the Sport." His time is the ninth-fastest mile in college history and remains an Arkansas record.
O'Shaughnessy ran for Ireland in the 1976 Olympics when he was still attending Arkansas.
"I remember when I first got the job, I was recruiting a kid in New Jersey and he asked me, 'Where's Arkansas?' and he kind of laughed about it," McDonnell said. "After Niall came, nobody ever asked me that again because he put us on the map."
As a freshman in 1974, O'Shaughnessy became McDonnell's first Southwest Conference individual champion by winning the indoor 800 meters. He was the first Razorback to win an SWC individual event since 1967.
O'Shaughnessy then finished sixth in the 800 at the 1974 NCAA Indoor Championships. He earned seven All-American honors overall, including taking seventh at the 1976 NCAA Cross Country Championships.
"Niall ran a 1:46.6 in the 800 and then was in the top 10 in the NCAA cross country meet running the 10,000 meters," McDonnell said. "You don't see half-milers running cross country that good, but Niall was the exception. He looked at every distance as just another race."
O'Shaughnessy earned undergraduate and master's degrees in engineering from Arkansas. After leaving the UA , he lived in Little Rock and worked for the state of Arkansas as an environmental engineer. He then worked for an engineering firm in Atlanta for many years.
O'Shaughnessy was attending graduate school and training for the 1980 Olympics, having qualified to run for Ireland, but he decided not to compete in Moscow after President Jimmy Carter imposed a boycott for the United States team because the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan.
"Niall came into my office and said, 'I want to talk to you about the Olympics, and I know you're real persuasive, but you're not going to win this argument because I've already made up my mind,' " McDonnell said. "I said, 'What are you talking about?'
"He said he was going to be an American citizen and coming here had done so much for him and he wasn't going to run at the Olympics if the American team wasn't going.
"It shows the character he had. He made a very tough decision, but he did because he believed it was the right thing to do."
O'Mara said O'Shaughnessy was a role model for all the Razorbacks.
"Niall was a perfect mentor," O'Mara said. "I don't think he ever said or did anything wrong. He was just a very good, caring person."
McDonnell and O'Mara visited O'Shaughnessy at his home two weeks ago and took him a medal for being inducted into the Southwest Conference Hall of Fame. The formal induction will take place Nov. 9 in Little Rock.
"It's tough to lose Niall, because he was such an outgoing guy," McDonnell said. "Everybody on our team respected him so much.
"Niall didn't shoot off his mouth about being so good, but the truth is that he was very good. He was one of the best collegiate runners of the 1970s."
Sports on 09/17/2015