Quiller notebook

There was no champagne waiting for Rory Quiller on Friday night after he secured his NCAA championship in the pole vault.

Just a drug test and a salad.

After making calls to local media and receiving his first-place trophy, Quiller had to take a drug test to validate his championship, as per NCAA rules.

Around midnight, Quiller was finally able to sit down to dinner with Binghamton University track and field head coach Mike Thompson, his father Jerry, who is the head track and field coach at West Point, and some family friends at a local Chili’s near the University of Arkansas, where the championship was held. He had a salad.

“I wasn’t that hungry; after competing your appetite’s non-existent when you try and go out,” Quiller said.

A JOB WELL DONE

At dinner, Thompson finally had a chance to congratulate the champion he helped groom for the past five years.

“I just said, ‘Rory, oh by the way, I didn’t tell you: nice job,’” Thompson said. “There was no hugging afterward, none of that stuff … we don’t really operate that way.”

QUILLER’S NOT THE ONLY WINNER

With Quiller’s championship, Thompson became one of only a handful of NCAA coaches to train a champion at all three NCAA Division levels at the same school.

According to a BU press release, the NCAA does not keep records of how many coaches have accomplished the feat, but indicated that it is “extremely unusual.”

He has coached eight NCAA champions in 13 years as BU’s head coach. Six of those came during the schools Division III era, which ended in 1998. Brian Hamilton was Binghamton’s lone Division II championship, in the long jump in 1999. Binghamton competed at the Division II level from 1998 to 2001.

GLAD THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN

When Quiller earned his undergraduate degree at Binghamton last year — he’s currently a graduate student in the School of Management — other universities came calling because he still had his indoor season eligibility and had finished in second place at last year’s indoor championship.

The problem was, the recruiters who wanted Quiller to transfer didn’t choose their words too well.

“Auburn was talking to him, Southern Connecticut, a Division II school was talking to him,” Thompson said. “One of the things they said was ‘Hey, you could come here and be a Division II national champion.’ And he was actually offended by that because he said, ‘I don’t want to be a Division II national champion, I want to be a Division I national champion.’”

Funny how that worked out.