SUNY Cortland Athletics

This is part of a series of interviews that Cortland track and field/cross country runner Shannon Imbornoni '21 conducted in 2020 with former Cortland track and field and/or cross country individual national champions.

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Stefan Mascoll ’99

Stefan Mascoll is a three-time individual NCAA champion and a five-time All-American. In 2019, he was inducted into the SUNY Cortland C-Club Hall of Fame. Mascoll still holds the school record and SUNYAC record in the indoor 55m and the 60m, both set in 1999. Additionally, Mascoll won the Cortland track and field Red Letter Award for both indoor and outdoor from the years 1996 to 1999. The Nanuet native currently resides in Virginia.

Some of the questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.


Why did you choose Cortland?
I transferred to Cortland after my freshmen year of college. Originally I went to North Carolina Central University in Durham and I didn’t feel like it was the best environment for me. My godfather, Arnold Rist ‘47, also a graduate of Cortland and a C-Club Hall of Fame member, mentioned Cortland to me. So during the summer in between my freshmen and sophomore year of college, he took me up to Cortland and I got to meet some key people on campus. I was pretty much hooked after that.
 
What do you remember about your national title season(s)?
The first one was in the 100m in 1999. It’s going to sound kind of funny, but growing up, I always knew that I was fast and knew that I could go really far in track & field. I just needed to be in the right environment and have the right coach and support staff around me. Even though track & field is a team sport, it’s still very much individualized. You really need to have somebody to give you that individual attention to get to the next level. When I won my first national championship in the 100m, it kind of validated for me that Cortland was the correct place for me. I had the support staff that I needed; I was in the right environment and had a coach who believed in me as much as I believed in myself. The second championship was indoors in the 55m dash and ironically I had pulled my hamstring pretty bad in the first indoor meet of that season. I cannot remember how many weeks I was out, but it felt like at least half the season. I rehabbed, I came back slowly and I was able to win a second championship. It showed me that I was able to overcome adversity and that getting hurt is part of the process of getting better, especially as a sprinter. I don’t know many good sprinters who have not pulled their hamstrings on the way to becoming better. I won again my senior year in the 55m. I broke the national record; actually I broke the national record both times in my championship wins. What really stood out to me in that last national championship was the coaching. The coach I was originally working under when I first got to Cortland, Brian Lange, had transitioned out of the head coaching role and had taken up a position with the Philadelphia 76ers. Larry Czarnecki then came on as the track & field coach. I remember having a conversation with Larry when he first came on and I expressed to him some of my concerns. What I loved about Larry was that he had such a selfless attitude where he said, ‘OK, I recognize the depth of the relationship you have with Brian and how much that helps you to get better, so why don’t we call Brian together and see if we can set up a system where he can still essentially coach you remotely? But, I would do everything I can to facilitate your coaching and make sure you get everything you need.’ I won under that format of coaching. Larry will always have a special place in my heart because I don’t think many coaches would be willing to do that. His outside-the-box thinking was fantastic and it just told me again that Cortland was the right place for me to be.
 
What was winning your first title like?
It was this overriding feeling of joy and validation that everything I have thought about myself was accurate. I always knew I could be good. I always knew I could get much faster and I could compete at these very high levels, but I just needed to be in the right environment with the right training. When I won, it was very much like, ‘I knew it. I knew I wasn’t crazy with these thoughts I was having about myself.’ That was one thought and the other thought was ‘I’m so happy I’m in a system that believes in me and is willing to give me what I need individually.’ I loved it.
 
What is your favorite memory of Cortland?
My first year of Cortland, I stayed in Clark Hall on the fifth floor. It’s common to get to know the people that live on your floor, but it’s also very common that after you’ve lived there for a year, people move off campus or move around with other friends they have in other areas of campus. What was so cool was that the people living on the fifth floor, both guys and ladies, we became so close and so tight, that we all decided that we wanted to stay in Clark on the fifth floor in the exact same rooms for another year. And we did. I still talk to some of those people today. It was really cool when we were all talking about it; we were just like, ‘why don’t we just come back and live right here? This works,’ and everybody said yes.
 
What have you taken from being a part of the team?
Whenever you’re on a team, everybody has to play a certain role. I felt that my role on the team was to be a role model, not just a guy on the team who is fast. I wanted other people on the team to know that if you wanted to be successful, you had to work at it. I would invite teammates to come with me to the weight room. Usually I would get up at six o’clock [in the morning], put in a couple of hours in the weight room, go to class, take a nap and then go to afternoon practice. I would invite guys to come with me and be part of my schedule. Later on, my schedule changed where I was lifting weights in the evening and I would invite guys there with me too. I just felt like that was my place on the team: to show people that if you want to be successful, you have to put in the work. Putting in the work is actually the fun part because by the time you step on the track, you know what you’re about to do and you have more confidence in yourself because you know you put in the work.
 
What are you doing now?
I am the coordinator of the Student Safety and Wellness Office for Fairfax County Public Schools. It is a public school system just outside of D.C. in Fairfax, Va. It’s roughly the tenth or eleventh largest school system in the country. The work our office does provides the majority of prevention programming for the division, so alcohol and other drug prevention, violence prevention, bullying prevention and Internet safety. We also have a mentoring program so that we can ensure that those kids that need another trusted adult in their life could be linked to one. We also have a restorative justice program which looks to support schools in how they respond to inappropriate student behavior through other means other than traditional forms of discipline. Instead of out of school suspension, detention, or in school suspension, restorative justice looks to bring together the people that were involved in the incident. Everyone then has the opportunity to talk about how it impacted them and the focus is always on the student that was the recipient of the inappropriate behavior. At the end, everyone has an opportunity to collaborate on an agreement to what the offender has to do to work on repairing the harm that has been done.
 
Do you have any advice for Cortland XC/TF athletes now?
From an athletic perspective, athletes have to do two things. One, you have to become a student of your craft. For me, I had to take the responsibility of learning how to become a better sprinter. You can’t expect the coaches to make you a better athlete; that’s your job. You have to figure out how it works. Learn different techniques, study different strategies and learn about body mechanics and how your body reacts under different situations. Study what the professionals do. Study what the great collegiate athletes do and then incorporate that. Also, let your coaches know that you are becoming a student of the craft so that they can work with you in a way that meets your needs. Outside of athletics, I encourage folks to try to remain as flexible as you can when it comes to finding a career and moving up the ladder of success. You never know where an opportunity might take you or where an opportunity may come from. If you’re so very tunnel vision on one thing, you might miss out on an awesome opportunity that you never thought you would be interested in. The other thing I would say is that it does take a lot of flexibility to move up and become successful in whatever career you want to be successful in. You may have to take on tasks that you don’t necessarily like, or you don’t necessarily enjoy, but each one of those tasks is a learning opportunity. As long as you look at it from that perspective and you’re willing to go outside of your comfort zone, you’ll be much more marketable as employers are looking for people to take on more responsibility in an organization. Remain as flexible as you can.