GoHeels Exclusive: Have Faith

When Chris Miltenberg first accepted the director position at Carolina, the track and field community buzzed – could he attract the staff and the student-athletes that would make it possible for the Tar Heels to return to the top?

The quick answer, yes.

Now, the long answer.

Although Carolina will have to say goodbye to an incredible group of seniors, the 2020 graduates can continue on with heads held high knowing they were the beginning of something great. In fact, the entire 2020 roster showed the track and field community that Carolina was ready to find its way back to the top.

"When our coaching staff arrived at Carolina last summer, we challenged everyone on our roster to buy into a vision for long-term success of our program," Miltenberg said. "We challenged our team to grow in every way – how we train, how we think, how we talk and, most of all, how we come together. Our team, and especially our seniors, responded to the challenge incredibly. I will be forever grateful to my first team at Carolina and what they set in motion."

And recruits took notice of the changes.

By Wednesday, Carolina had added an incredible 26 undergraduates to the 2020-21 rosters. The signing class covers every event – sprints, jumps, distance, throws, multis – and hails from 15 different states.

Then, Thursday morning, Carolina officially added four graduate transfers – Yale's Allen Siegler, Princeton's Conor Lundy and Stanford's Thomas Ratcliffe and Alex Ostberg.

At first glance, Ostberg and Ratcliffe bring an incredible amount of success to the table.

During his time at Stanford, Ostberg earned All-America recognition from the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) five times – three in cross country and two in indoor track. He received All-Region and All Pac-12 honors three times in cross country and was a member of two Pac-12 Championship cross country teams in 2017 and 2018, during which he helped the Cardinal to consecutive top-five finishes at the NCAA Cross Country Championships.

The 2016 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, Ratcliffe earned USTFCCCA first team All-America honors with a bronze medal in the 5,000 meters at the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Championships.

But they are also no strangers to Miltenberg, who joined Carolina last summer after seven years at Stanford.

Both credit their success largely, if not entirely, to the Coach Miltenberg. So much so, that even before the coronavirus pandemic, Ostberg was preparing to join Miltenberg in Chapel Hill after graduating from Stanford.

"I never had the opportunity to reunite with Coach Milt in a collegiate setting until the COVID-19 situation, but it became a very mutually beneficial situation for both of us," Ostberg said. "I had planned on going out there to train post-collegiately with Milt and another one of my Stanford teammates, Steven Fahy, who recently moved out there to be with him. The way the chips fell, this option just became apparent to me a few weeks ago."

While Ostberg's opportunity to train with Miltenberg again at the collegiate level was unexpected, Ratcliffe struggled with a tough choice – sticking with his teammates or reuniting with his old coach.

"I had a couple injuries this winter, and I started thinking about the possibility of finishing off my collegiate career with the coach I had for the first three years of college," Ratcliffe said. "I'm leaving a lot of people and a lot of friends behind at Stanford which made it an incredibly difficult decision. Knowing Steven Fahy was training there and hearing Alex might be going out there as well helped soften the blow, but I realized UNC had some great grad programs and from there it started to snowball."

Though they did not know Carolina was in their future at the time, both Lundy and Siegler knew they would look into competing as graduate transfers early in their careers since Ivy League universities do not allow fifth-year graduate students to compete in athletic competition.

"Conor and I both come from schools where we couldn't use our eligibility further and both of us had injury troubles in college," Siegler said. "I had a pretty bad injury my freshman year and after doctors said I might not be able to run again, I decided if I was able to get back to a competitive level, I wanted to take that as far as I could."

Ostberg intends to join Siegler, a 2019 NCAA East Preliminary Qualifier in the 1,500 meters, in the Master of Public Health program at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health. Meanwhile, Lundy, a three-time NCAA Cross Country Championship qualifier, hopes to be joined by Ratcliffe in the Master of Accounting (MAC) program at the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

"I developed my interest in public health at Yale, and UNC became a great intersection for both of those interests – UNC has a great public health school and the new coaching staff really excited me," Siegler said. "In September, my college coach sent out a few feeler emails for me to see if there'd be anyone interested, and Coach Miltenberg replied. That was the first time I got really excited. I was happy that this coaching staff would consider looking for me."

"I think I reached out to Coach (Dylan) Sorensen pretty early – August or September," Lundy said. "I just kept the call lines open and as soon as I got into the MAC program, I called them up. We pretty much had everything set up by February, and now with COVID, I have some extra eligibility as well."

A Vision

Many would ask the question, "Why Carolina?"

Aside from their incredible graduate programs, these guys don't know much about Carolina yet. Before the pandemic, they were just looking to make the most of senior seasons with teams they loved. Now, they're coming to Chapel Hill with three of the four having never stepped foot on campus.

Again, why?

They believe in Coach Miltenberg.

They believe in his ability to take their running to the highest level.

They believe in his vision for Carolina.

"When Coach Milt was recruiting me at Stanford, I noticed he just had this infectious enthusiasm from from our first conversation," Ostberg said.

"When you talk to him, it's very clear, very quickly that he has an idea for what you're capable of doing and how quickly you can get there. He was just starting off at Stanford when I signed with him, but I was committing to a coach and a program that he could help me realize my potential as both an athlete and a person. I think he now has the resume to support that.

"Coach Milt takes his job very seriously because he realizes he's impacting these people at a very formative time in their lives. For me personally, I feel like I'm going to be leaving Stanford as a different person because of his influence on me during the first four years. It was kind of a no-brainer that if I was going to pick a post-collegiate coach, he was going to be the one."

If his teammates had not made the choice so difficult, the decision might have been just as easy for Ratcliffe.

"I had a lot of ups-and-downs in terms of athletics and my health at Stanford," Ratcliffe said. "Because of that, Coach Miltenberg and I built really strong bond that I think is really hard to develop with a coach.

"He just understands the mindset of high-level athletes. He understands how track and field people think and that gives him really good insight into what athletes are going through. He can relate to people outside of training and what's going on in their lives as college kids. Coach Milt takes coaching more seriously than just a job. He'll just always go the extra mile and that makes it more exciting to work with him again."

Lundy and Siegler have never been coached by Miltenberg, but they've seen what vision can do for a program.

"When I was taking visits in high school, two things sold me on Princeton – I had a great group of guys to train with and my coach had a good vision for what he wanted to build as far as a team culture goes," Lundy said. "That's what really drew me to Princeton and it's actually what drew me to UNC, too. I know Coach Milt is in a very similar situation where he's trying to build a team culture that's centered around not only getting the most out of yourself but also doing it for your teammates. I think that's hard to say no to."

Siegler admits he did not know much about colleges when he started his visits.

"I wasn't as fast as these guys coming out of high school, and I didn't really know a lot about colleges at the time," Siegler said. "When I was on campus, I started to learn what a great education I could get at Yale and Coach Paul Harkins made me feel really comfortable. He seemed like someone who was really invested in us not just as athletes but also as people. I wouldn't trade those two things for anything."

But Miltenberg is not the only one at Carolina who is committed to the vision.

"Coach Sorensen was my point guy before I committed to UNC, and I just trusted him," Siegler said. "He seemed like a good guy. He was so enthusiastic about the program that they were building, so I thought, 'If he's that enthusiastic, Coach Miltenberg is probably just as enthusiastic.' I just felt this would be a really positive environment with any of the coaches."

Again

He did it once at Stanford. But is it really possible Miltenberg can lay the foundation to build Carolina up from the ground up? Graduate transfers are valuable assets, but many fans can see building a program around them as an easy way out.

"Without a doubt, these grad transfers have proven they can make an immediate impact on the track," Miltenberg said. "But there's a more important reason why we wanted them at Carolina.

"Since coming to Carolina, everything we've talked about has centered on building ourselves into one of the best teams in the country. It doesn't happen overnight, and we knew we needed to build a culture that makes people want to come and stay for their entire careers.

"These four guys set a great example for the young members in our program who want to compete at the highest level and take our team to the highest level. Thomas and Alex are like family to me and I would do anything to help them chase their collegiate, Olympic or professional goals. I know the leadership they will provide and we were very methodical in making sure Conor and Allen were a great fit with the culture we are building.

"We have a great core of returners on our team that have really bought into the vision and have done a fantastic job working to rebuild Carolina. We have a great freshmen class coming in that is ready to get started. And now, we've added these four grad transfers who have been to the top and are ready to show others what it takes. In my mind, that's the ultimate combination to accelerate our whole team's ascension."

"There's really not much doubt in my mind at all that Coach Miltenberg can repeat what he built at Stanford here at Carolina," Ostberg said. "I read that profile on Coach Miltenberg that was published earlier this year. I think he was quoted saying, 'If there was another place other than Stanford that we could make this work, UNC would be the place to do that.'

"Allen and I are going into the second-best public health school in the country. I think that's why all of us are converging here, too – Carolina has so many great programs for graduate students and undergraduates. I think UNC has all the necessary components for Coach Miltenberg and his staff to rebuild this program into a successful track and field and cross country program.

"Coach Milt's focus is not in the immediate results. It's in the process of getting better on a daily basis, on a yearly basis, and I have faith that whatever program he's a part of, athletes across all event groups are going to experience success."

Getting Back To Normal

For now, the latest additions to the Carolina family will have to wait. States are seeing stay-in-place orders lifted and businesses are reopening, but schools remain closed with hopes of returning for the fall term.

But like most college students, these guys are just eager to get back to normal.

"For me, this whole thing serendipitously happened," Ostberg said. "In a time of bad news and uncertainty, I'm excited to be fortunate enough to have a chance to compete again at the collegiate level with a coaching staff I know and trust."

"I'm definitely looking forward to continuing to see Alex everyday and seeing Steven Fahy again," Ratcliffe said. "It has been a really difficult process, but I'm looking forward to getting to know the new teammates I'll have at UNC."

"I think there's something to be said for a change of scenery, especially in running," Lundy said. "I'll cherish all of my memories from Princeton, but I'm excited to see things from a new perspective so I can find ways to keep improving. Coming from the Northeast, I'm also pretty pumped about the weather."

"Right now, I'm in a weird situation," Siegler said. "I'm from San Diego so I'm home now, but all of my stuff is in New Haven (, Connecticut). That's what I'm most excited about – getting my stuff and putting it in my new house at Chapel Hill. I think once I take care of that, I'll be able to focus on the fun stuff – getting in this great new environment, getting to train with amazing guys and being able to be a part of a great academic program. But right now, I want my stuff back."

Related Videos