Out of breath and totally spent, Tom O'Hora shuffled off the track at the Philadelphia Metropolitan Championionshps and ran smack into a firm handshake from one of the most prominent coaches in the world.
"Pretty good race," Alex Woodley said. "Ever thought about running for the Pioneers?"
In an era when world-class track athletes were more famous than NBA all-stars, the Philadelphia Pioneers had some of the fastest runners in the world.
"That was like the Yankees asking me, 'How'd you like to play with Mickey Mantle?', recalled O'Hora, now in his 27th year as Cabrini track and cross country coach, with 25 team and individual conference titles to his credit in cross country alone. Not to mention membership in the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
Moments earlier, in that "pretty good race," O'Hora had taken the baton for LaSalle and blown past Villanova anchorman Larry Livers to win the 4 x 440-yard relay (now 4 x 400 meters). Livers merely happened to be an Olympic silver medalist.
O'Hora, a gutsy kid from Scranton, was about to graduate after leading LaSalle to three Middle Atlantic Conference titles. Ironically, he'd gone there because he doubted he'd measure up at mighty Villanova, then a track superpower. And 'Nova did nothing to try and change his mind.
A few years after blowing by Livers and Villanova, O'Hora ran the second leg at the Penn Relays as the Pioneers broke the American record in the 4 x 440 with a time of 3:03.
In later years, O'Hora became a terror on the Masters age-group circuit, winning two national titles in the 400 and anchoring the United States as team captain to a bronze medal in the 4 x 400 at the World Games in Australia -- despite coming down with food poisoning the night before.
O'Hora entered the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 1989 - fittingly, his daughter, Veronica O'Hora Ellers, entered the new Cabrini Hall of Fame in October 2006. Hall of Fame induction usually signifies the end of the road, but Tom O'Hora was about to shift into high gear as a college coach.
When he entered the Pennsylvania Hall, seven years after arriving at Cabrini in 1982, he'd guided the men to five conference titles in cross country and the women to one. As of today, the Cavalier men have piled up 17 titles, the women have captured 10 crowns.
Under O'Hora, the men have won nine team titles in three different conferences, along with eight individual gold medals, including Eddie Pentar's first-place finish at the PAC Championship in 2007. The women have pocketed four team titles and six individual golds.
Yet, that laundry list doesn't include other major championships. The men won four NAIA district titles - three team and one individual - in the four years before Cabrini joined the NCAA in 1988. The women have earned four team titles at the Philadelphia Metropolitan Meet, while the men have tallied one.
Before coming to Cabrini, O'Hora rang up a glittering record in seven years as men's coach at Holy Cross High in Delran, N.J. He produced five individual state track champions, won the state parochial-school track title and led the cross-country team to the Eastern championship.
In dual meets, his Holy Cross teams went 68-13-1 in track and 70-14 in cross country. Before he arrived, the school had never had a winning record in either sport.
O'Hora grew up in an economically depressed Scranton that was fast approaching Rust Belt status. He ran for Scranton Central, the city's top academic high school, slogging his way around a track of cinder and sand.
"I had no coaching in high school," he recalled. "I had no idea how to run whatsoever. Our coach was a chain smoker, a football line coach. He'd tell us, 'You wanna run? Go out and run.' "
So O'Hora went out and ran, winning every 440 and 880 but one as a junior and senior and capturing back-to-back Lackawanna County and District II Championships. He also anchored the mile and two-mile relay teams to back-to-back undefeated seasons.
