Penn Relays Announces 2020 Wall of Fame Class

12/2/2019 11:00:00 AM

The Penn Relay Carnival is pleased to announce our 2020 Wall of Fame class. This class includes four individuals and five relay teams.
Individuals
Erin Donohue, Haddonfield Memorial (NJ) '01, North Carolina '05, Nike
Erin Donohue is one of only four American women with Penn Relays championships at the high school, college and professional levels. In total, she has eight wins: the high school mile, five distance relays with the University of North Carolina, and the invitational mile twice. Erin was also a part of all three wins when UNC pulled the distance triple in 2003.

Graham Hood, Arkansas '95
Graham Hood has seven collegiate relay victories for the University of Arkansas, all of them coming in the distance events. He is the only male athlete ever to be on four winning distance medley relay teams and anchored the 1994 4x1500 to the second-fastest time ever. His anchor leg in the 1995 distance medley of 3:55.6 was the tenth-fastest 1,600 in meet history.

Suziann Reid, Eleanor Roosevelt (Greenbelt, MD) '95, Texas '99, Team USA
Suziann Reid has had success at all three levels of competition, totaling seven relay victories. She was the High School Girls Athlete of the Meet in 1995 with what was at the time the fastest 400 split time in Penn Relays history for high school girls (52.1). At Texas, Suziann became only the second woman to be on four straight winning college women's 4x400 relays, anchoring the last two. She later was on the winning 4x400 team at the first USA vs The World competition in 2000, adding a second title in 2004.

Conor Sweeney, St. Malachy's College High School (Belfast, IRL) '00
Conor Sweeney is the only male athlete in history to win a high school event four times in row, as part of the winning St. Malachy's high school boys' distance medley from 1997 to 2000. He ran the 1600m anchor for the last two wins, and his 1999 team was the first team to break the ten-minute barrier in that event. As an encore in 2000, Conor also anchored the winning high school boys' 4x800 relay, bringing his total number of high school victories to five. He then added a sixth watch as a member of the St. Malachy's alumni team that won the Olympic Development DMR in 2001.

Relays
1930 Ohio State 880-yard relay
Dick Rockaway, Willis Richards, Paul Strother, George Simpson
The 1930 winning 880-yard relay was the third straight victory for Ohio State in this event, and they would win again in 1932 and 1933 for a total of five wins over six years. The winning time of the 1930 team, 1:26.8, was the fastest of those five wins. That performance chopped a full second off the prior carnival record by Yale in 1926 and remained on the books as a record for six years, broken by the University of Texas in 1936.

1968 Villanova 4-Mile relay
Ian Hamilton, Tom Donnelly, Charlie Messenger, Frank Murphy
Against the backdrop of Villanova's dominance of the men's college distance relays in the 1960's and 1970's, the 1968 team stands out. While Villanova's first meet record in the 4xMile, from 1965, only took three seconds off the prior record set by Fordham, the 1968 team sliced off a more sizeable 12 seconds from 1965 with a winning time of 16:27.4. It was the fastest time in the stretch of five straight wins from 1967 to 1971 and remained a carnival record until 1974 when Villanova broke it again.

1968 Florida A&M 440-yard relay
Nat James, Major Hazleton, Gene Milton, Jim Ashcroft
The Florida A&M foursome remains the only group in Relays history at any level to win three straight years in the same event with the same lineup. After winning in 1966, they broke Abilene Christian's 1959 record of 40.9 with a time of 40.6 in 1967, then broke that mark in 1968 with a 40.4. This record was broken in 1970 by UTEP. Florida A&M was the second Historically Black College or University and only the third team overall to win three straight 440-yard relays.

1999 St. Malachy's College High School (Belfast, IRL) Distance Medley relay
Joe McAlister, Joe Hendry, Francis McCaffery, Conor Sweeney
From 1997 through 2000, St. Malachy's won four straight high school boys' distance medleys one of only two schools to accomplish that feat. The 1999 team, which ran 9:59.84, broke a 16-year-old record held jointly by Willingboro (NJ) and Bernards (NJ) as well as the fabled 10-minute barrier. Although South Lakes (VA)—with Alan Webb on anchor—would surpass St. Malachy's best in 2001, the 1999 time by the boys from Ireland remains the Carnival's third-fastest high school distance medley 20 years later.

2012 USA v The World women's 4x100-meter relay (USA Red)
Tianna Madison, Allyson Felix, Bianca Knight, Carmelita Jeter
The winning 4x100 time of the USA Red team from 2012, 42.19, remains the Carnival and Franklin Field record for that event. At the Olympics in London that year, the same quartet in the same order set the world record of 40.82, a time that still stands seven years later. Tianna Madison Bartoletta became the third woman to hold a Relays collegiate relay record and a USA vs The World relay record at the same time.

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