Grammer: Paris Olympics a celebration of the most dominant, yet overlooked, era in UNM athletics

Joe Franklin was scurrying off to catch a train Tuesday morning in Paris and nary a person was around to notice.

“Nobody wakes up early here,” Franklin said in a phone interview with the Journal, late Monday in Albuquerque. “I’m out on the streets right now and nobody is out.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The director of track and field and cross country at the University of Louisville, who until one year ago spent 16 years quietly building the sport with the most prolific run of success in the history of UNM Lobo Athletics, never exactly got his due in Albuquerque, either.

That’s not even a knock on the Duke City, where the high elevation and thin New Mexico air has served as a welcoming and inviting backdrop for world class athletes in a variety of sports to train.

But Franklin, in Paris for the Olympics, is about as about as anonymous there as he was in a town where he was a two-time national coach of the year, two-time national champion, oversaw athletes earning 201 All-America honors and 10 individual NCAA national championships.

Franklin has coached five Olympians competing this year — former Lobo runners Josh Kerr, Weini Kelati, Fiona O’Keeffe and Calli Thackery and Louisville discus thrower Jayden Ulrich. He also coached two more former Lobos who could very well be in Paris if not for injury — 2021 Tokyo steeplechase medalist Courtney Frerichs would have been a medal favorite had she not torn her ACL in May — and Hannah Nuttall, who won Britain’s Olympic Trials in the 5,000 meters, but was left off the team as her time didn’t hit a specific Olympic standard.

And for good measure, two former Lobo runners — Julian Florez and Nicole Robertson — are coach and nutritionist for Kerr and in Paris while former UNM volunteer coach Alicja Konieczek is competing in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase for Poland, though technically never was coached by Franklin.

Got all that?

“Oh yeah,” Franklin said without hesitation when asked if this was the most former athletes he ever had compete in an Olympics. “Not even close.”

While he would be pacing if he was coaching them, he admits he’d feel in far more control than he does now as a fan.

“Watching Jaden Ulrich throw the disc (last Friday),” Franklin said of his lone Louisville athlete in the Games, “it’s just mind-wrecking because you can’t control it. If I’m in the stadium, I’m probably going to be on the concourse pacing. It’s a whole other level of stress.”

Franklin said he hasn’t seen any of his former athletes in Paris, at least not before they compete, and doesn’t plan to out of respect to their current coaches and game plans.

Deferring credit, Franklin said every athlete he’s coached in this year’s Olympics has a similar trait.

“It’s their competitiveness and drive. It’s all very similar in this group,” he said,” different in their own individual ways, but they all have an extreme competitive drive that comes out when it’s time.”

And, short of Ulrich, all were right here in Albuquerque for all of us to celebrate over the past decade, if only we had chosen to do so.

Rare was the 10 p.m. sportscast that featured their success at UNM or the Sunday morning sports section with big headlines proclaiming their notable successes.

There was coverage, mind you. But not nearly enough considering the level of international success these former neighbors of ours are now experiencing. And, mind you, most of the track and field team’s successes ran concurrently to UNM men’s basketball’s longest postseason drought; and in a decade of empty seats within University Stadium while the Lobo football team struggled; and plenty of media attention paid to the department’s financial struggles.

No, this isn’t only a media thing, though we are part of it. Frankly, if more readers and fellow New Mexicans showed their appreciation for what Franklin and his national champion athletes were doing, the media would have followed suit.

This is on all of us. But, if you believe Franklin, there’s still something good brewing here in Albuquerque, if we care to take notice.

Franklin admittedly keeps close tabs on the Lobos and is impressed with what coach Darren Gauson has done since taking over the program past year.

“I’m super happy for Darren and Habtom (Samuel, UNM’s decorated freshman runner) and everything he’s doing,” Franklin said. “And they’ve got some really good kids coming in. It just continues to grow. The trend is going to continue.”