Former Washington State athletes displaced by cuts to track and field program excelling elsewhere

Brooke Lyons remembers getting the text summoning her to a mandatory meeting, aborting a hike she’d planned with friends.

Ten minutes later, after a terse and awkward Zoom call, she found herself without a team or a school or any idea what might be in store.

That was the broadside 51 weeks ago when Washington State University gutted its storied track and field program, eliminating all but the distance events from its offerings and casting adrift 50 sprinters, hurdlers, jumpers and throwers.

“I was in a daze all day,” she said.

And it wasn’t just initial shock.

Mason Lawyer, like Lyons a record-setting sprinter, still had to complete an internship in the collegiate weight room in the weeks after the announcement, helping athletes in WSU’s remaining sports.

“I felt like (a) dead man walking,” he recalled.

In time, rays poked through the rubble. Athletes found new schools, coaches found new jobs, new records were set, and lives found new rhythms. This week, Lawyer, Lyons and six more of those Cougar refugees will compete in the NCAA Division I Track and Field Championships in Eugene.

That might get ratified as a record for irony, as well.

Combine those eight with the three WSU distance runners – Kenyans Evans Kurui, Rosemary Longisa and Caroline Jepkorir – who made it through regional qualifying and the Cougars would have had their largest contingent of national competitors since 2015.

That would seem to fly in the face of the reason given for the elimination of nondistance events that day, as stated in a two-paragraph release: “This change gives the WSU Track and Field program the best opportunity to remain competitive at the conference and national levels” of distance running. All three of the Cougars’ NCAA entrants were on the team a year ago.

But it’s also true that, as University of Idaho sprinter Keenan Kuntz noted, “most of us were able to land on our feet” – and those feet kept moving.

Lawyer, WSU’s record holder at 200 meters, has set four school records at Arizona, indoors and out, and has clocked 9.93 (wind-aided) and 20.02 this spring. Lyons set the Arizona record at 300 meters indoors. In all, five sprinters and hurdlers wound up following former WSU assistant coach Gabriel Mvumvure to Tucson.

“Before he landed here, he told us to be selfish for ourselves and do what we needed to do,” Lawyer said. “But it’s been a blessing to continue with the coach who took me from a 10.4 sprinter to sub-10.”

Grant Buckmiller, whose name remains on three WSU records, has blazed a 44.87 400 meters at LSU and is in the NCAA field. Discus thrower Kai Twaddle-Dunham has topped 190 feet at Auburn.

And even athletes who didn’t make it through the rugged regional qualifying had good seasons. Pole vaulters Eva Lowder and Tatum Moku now own the indoor and outdoor records at Grand Canyon – jumping under another former WSU assistant, Derick Hinch – and Moku was Mountain West Conference champion.

In all, 28 former Cougs wound up in Division I programs. Not surprisingly, eight of those moved just across the state line to Idaho and scored 54 points for the Vandals at the Big Sky meet. Among those who took WSU on its offer to fulfill scholarship agreements was Eli Lawrence, a 51-foot triple jumper who finished his degree this spring.

Still, there is some residual hurt from the school’s brutal cut, in particular the timing (less than a month before the NCAA Transfer Portal closed), the impersonal way it was presented and the fact that former athletic director Anne McCoy essentially hid out for more than two weeks before making a public rationale.

Notably, all 28 of those transfers had stuck with the school when it was abandoned by the Pac-12 and the goal of contending for a podium spot at a conference championship was gone.

“The biggest thing for me was I grew up a Coug,” said Lyons. “My parents had me and my sister singing the fight song before we learned our ABCs. So there was some real grief for me. I went through the stages – angry, confused – on top of the changes, and I never was really great with change.”

Lawyer’s times were always going to put him in great demand – at least initially. He took visits to national powers Arkansas, Oregon and Texas. But soon it was discovered that a big chunk of his kinesiology credits would not transfer and that some suitors didn’t offer the same major – leaving him with two years of school, though only one of track eligibility.

“I basically lost a year,” he said. “I’m grateful that Arizona is able to cover that.”

Lawyer also noted all the current and ex-Cougs competing this week and believes the school could have capitalized on that.

“The portal has been such a huge thing for everybody,” he said. “WSU having that kind of success would have been noticed, and I think there are athletes out there who would have moved to be a part of that success.”

But all of the displaced parties seem to have moved on. Idaho javelin thrower Blake Sturgis from Spokane insisted he “has nothing but respect for WSU. I was hurt at the time, but I also know everything happens for a reason.”

Kuntz, a former West Valley and Mead sprinter who ripped a 10.18 in the 100 this spring, reasoned that, “This is a new day and age in college sports, and things change quickly. They did what they had to do.”

Even Lawyer, the program’s most visible success story next to hurdler Micaela de Mello, who is finishing at Oregon, won’t cop to hard feelings.

“The whole thing,” he said, “could be a blessing in disguise for many of us.”