LAS CRUCES, N.M. – Animal feces, hand-sized cracks and ruts caused by baby carriages.
 
Those were the defining characteristics of the New Mexico State University Track & Field Complex when Director of Athletics Mario Moccia took over the job in January of 2015. Open for public use at the time, the facility was in a state of complete despair.
 
The outlook for the Aggie track & field program – one with virtually no budget and no equipment – was even grimmer.
 
"Forget about having a championship track program," Moccia said. "That wasn't conducive to having a competitive college one."
 
Moccia was determined to change that. Simply, track & field mattered to him.
 
Arriving at NM State after an eight-year stint as athletic director at Southern Illinois, Moccia bore witness to the Salukis' rise to national prominence behind the leadership of head coach and four-time Olympian Connie Price-Smith. SIU became a dynasty within the Missouri Valley Conference, winning four team titles while making noise at the NCAA Championships year in and year out.
 
Moccia wanted the same for NM State. After head cross country and track & field coach Orin Richburg's retirement in late September of 2016, he embarked on a nationwide search for a successor to the USA Track & Field legend.
 
With Price-Smith's help, Moccia went through countless candidates before coming across the name of a heralded Alabama assistant.
 
The Crimson Tide's throws coach was the US Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's South Region Assistant Coach of the Year in 2014. He had arrived in Tuscaloosa, Ala., after spending six years as an assistant at Southeastern Conference powerhouse Kentucky, making coaching stops at storied programs Arizona, Boise State and Kansas before that.
 
He himself was an accomplished student-athlete in The Grand Canyon State. A native of Phoenix, he attended Arizona and was the NCAA's top-ranked discus thrower in 1998, winning a Pac-10 championship that year.
 
His name was Doug Reynolds. The rest is history.
 
Finding the new leader
What the Aggies needed more than a coach was a cheerleader. Someone who would inject the program with an infusion of enthusiasm and expectations.
 
Moccia found that in Reynolds. His energetic and calculated approach to coaching was a perfect match.
 
"I always thought we were going to need someone with tremendous enthusiasm and positivity, but also with a laser-like focus on the science of how to win a track meet," Moccia said. "Doug touched all of those bases."
 
Moccia was impressed with Reynolds' ability to articulate the comprehensive fundamentals of building a program. He was always counting points, meticulously aware of what it would take to win.
 
"He explained the formula on how to put a team together by events, scoring, recruiting and knowing your strengths," Moccia said.
 
The Aggies had found their man. NM State named Reynolds as head coach in July of 2017 and, at that moment, was already well on their way to making history.
 
Building the foundation
NM State had no shortage of successes under Richburg's leadership. The Aggies won 27 individual Western Athletic Conference track & field championships, including 11 indoor and 16 outdoor, since he took over in 2008.
 
The only accolade missing, however, was a team championship. Reynolds was ready to change that.
 
He emphasized a team-first mindset from the start, putting the collective over the individual.
 
"When I sat in our first track meeting three years ago, I remember telling them, 'We're here to win championships,'" Reynolds said. "Some of the looks I got made it very apparent that there was never a vision as a team that we could win championships."
 
The first task was to help the program's student-athletes see that it was a realistic possibility. To do so, Reynolds adopted a simple mantra – 'Do Your Job.'
 
Borrowed from the legendary New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, the three-word statement was a powerful message for the Aggies.
 
Everyone had a role. Everyone had a job to do.
 
"We laid down the focus that everybody has a job," Reynolds said. "You don't have to carry the team. If everybody goes in and does their job, we all carry the team."
 
Making history
Two and half years later, that mantra helped NM State do something it had never done before – win its first WAC indoor team title.
 
The Aggies took home the 2020 crown by blowing out the field and toppling six-time reigning champion GCU in the process. NM State scored 206 points as a team, coming in ahead of the second-place Lopes by 49 points.
 
It went exactly as planned.
 
"[The coaches and I] set a plan in place in year one of exactly how we were going to do it," Reynolds said. "We sat down, looked at the league and how our opponents were structured. What was their model, and how do we beat that model?"
 
Reynolds and his staff – assistant coaches Tony Davis and Joseph Rath – had laid out a plan on how to recruit. They found student-athletes with profiles that fit their model of how to win.
 
The team's dominance at the indoor championships made it clear that they left no stone unturned in the process. The Aggies were crowned champions in nine of the 17 total events, including the 60m dash, 200m dash, 400m dash, 3000m race, 60m hurdles, triple jump, high jump, 4x400m relay and distance medley relay.
 
NM State's tremendous depth was evident, as well. The squad had multiple top-three finishers in four events, highlighted by Brooke Wallace, Lanie Whelpley and Daneisha Woodside sweeping the podium in the 400m dash.
 
The Aggies kept their foot on the throttle the entire time. Everyone did their job.
 
The result? It was NM State hoisting the trophy high into the air when it was all said and done.


 
Eyeing the future
What Reynolds, his coaching staff and student-athletes accomplished was more than historic. Lacking resources and calling a dilapidated practice facility home, it was highly improbable.
 
"Doug did more than just achieve something that hasn't been done here," Moccia said. "He's helped move the ball forward for our programs that haven't won yet to say, 'Look at those guys. They don't have very much at all, and they're winning championships.'"
 
With a $600,000 facility upgrade and resurfacing on the way, the outlook for the Aggie track & field program has never been brighter. Moccia's dream of hosting a track meet at NM State, which hasn't been done since 2006, is inching closer and closer to reality.
 
There is no question the program is in the right hands for sustained success. A clear-cut title win and systematic dismantling of the six-time reigning WAC indoor champions has Moccia more certain of that than ever.
 
"It wasn't a fluke," Moccia said. "We did it methodically. We've got the coaches in place, and we've got the student-athletes in place.
 
"Things are definitely trending in the right direction for our track & field program."
 
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