Dick Weis: A Coach of Champion Runners at Albertus Magnus, Part 2

Famed Coach of ‘The Long Red Line’ Fondly Remembered

By Jamie Kempton

Continued from the  01.08.25 edition

Zealous Training, Positive Thinking, Religious Inspiration

Coach Weis’s training philosophy blended elements from such legendary Olympic coaches as Arthur Lydiard of New Zealand and Percy Cerutty of Australia, along with motivational nuggets from literary giants like Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking,” and judiciously placed references to Bible verses – after all, Albertus is a Catholic institution. His runners absorbed all of it – the 1,000-mile summers, the 100-mile training weeks during the season, the punishing sessions 

up Clausland Mountain and Hook Mountain, along with exhortations such as “The future is now!” and “We are the upperdog!” and inspirational Bible verses such as Romans 8:31 (“If God be for us, who can be against us?”) and Philippians 4:13 (“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”). Coach Weis received ample support from his trusted assistant coaches, Ralph Coleman, a former standout runner for the Falcons, and Mr. Jim Moran, an erstwhile star sprinter for Coach Jumbo Elliott at Villanova University. (Sadly, Coach Moran passed away in September 2025 at age 92.) Coach Weis’s wife, Donna, who died in April 2025, was also a great source of strength throughout their 58 years of marriage.

In a 1985 poll of local sports observers conducted by The Journal-News, the 1974 Albertus cross country team was voted one of Rockland’s top five athletic teams from the previous 25 years, and the only cross country team to earn the designation.

Collegiate Coaching Mastery

Weis’s coaching ability did not need any validation after his stint at Albertus Magnus, but he indeed reaffirmed that mastery on the college level. First he coached women’s track and cross country at the University of Missouri from 1979 to 1983, developing 26 All-Americans, five U.S. Olympic Trials qualifiers, one NCAA Div. I individual champion (Sabrina Dornhoefer) and one Big Eight Conference team champion. He then moved on to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, where he led the Cowboys from 1983 until his retirement in 2009. While at the helm at OSU, Weis guided the men’s cross country team to a berth in the NCAA Div. I Nationals nine straight years, including a third-place finish in 1995 and a fourth-place finish the following year. He also shepherded the women’s team to the Big Eight championship in 1986 and guided six consecutive Big Eight individual women’s champions.

Covering track & field and cross country at OSU, Weis produced 86 All-Americans, nine NCAA champions, five NCAA runners-up, one world record-holder (Christine McMiken, indoor 3-mile) and two Olympians. As proud as he was of the athletic All-America runners he nurtured, he was even more proud of the many Academic All-America citations his athletes earned. “I get more satisfaction from seeing the total development of the individual than from their running,” he once told a newspaper reporter. “The running doesn’t go on forever.”

Two of Coach Weis’s sons, Joe and Ray, competed for OSU as members of the track and wrestling teams, respectively. Joe was a two-time Big Eight champion in the 1,000 meters and Ray was a member of the wrestling team in 1993 and 1996. You could say Joe Weis was following in the footsteps of his dad. Dick Weis, a White Plains native, starred in track at Archbishop Stepinac High School and once held the Westchester County record in the 600-yard run.

A Final Reunion

Although in failing health in recent years, including a bout with multiple myeloma, Coach Weis was able to reunite one last time with his former proteges from Albertus Magnus. Coach’s son Ray brought him in from Stillwater the last weekend of November 2025 to gather with team members at the annual Alumni Cross Country Run at Rockland Lake and at a post-race gathering in Pearl River. Team member John McNiff, class of 1975 and president of the Falcon Spiked Shoe Club booster organization, arranged the trip for Coach Weis and his son. Everyone was thrilled to spend time with the man who orchestrated a defining chapter in their lives as students and athletes. Little did anyone know, in the midst of reminiscing and reliving the stories from the Albertus days, that Coach Weis would be gone a scant month later.

Coach Weis, ever the eternal optimist, would not want his athletes to mourn his passing, but rather to celebrate the camaraderie, the bonds forged more than a half-century ago that still endure, and the unparalleled successes that can never be erased. Even in death, Coach Dick Weis remains larger than life. Long live his Long Red Line!