Vermont colleges celebrate 50 years of NCAA Division III sports

JERICHO, Vt. (WCAX) – The D3 NCAA Track and Field Championships are scheduled to get underway Thursday down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Middlebury has a couple representatives, but one Vermont native will become the first Castleton Spartan to ever compete at the national meet.
Underhill native and MMU grad Harrison Leombruno-Nicholson is headed to the big stage to compete in javelin. He claimed the Little East title last month, setting a new program record with a toss of 60.45 meters in the process. Leombruno-Nicholson is one of 22 athletes from around the country hoping to claim that national title, with the Spartan senior coming in as the 14th national seed.
Now this is actually the second time he had a qualifying mark for NCAA’s, but he had to pull out last year due to injury. Leombruno-nicholson credits his experience as a multi-sport athlete at Mt. Mansfield for helping him chart the path to success at Castleton.
“Shout out to my boy Bill Eschholz, actually the track and field coach here at Mt. Mansfield,” Leombruno-Nicholson said. “Him and Edward Kusiak. He was my homeroom teacher, and I was like, ‘I wanna do ultimate frisbee.’ He was like, ‘You’re not doing ultimate frisbee, man. You’re gonna come do track and field.’ And I was like, ‘All right, I don’t wanna run. I don’t wanna do anything. I used to play baseball, so what can I do?’ He was like, ‘Try javelin.’ Picked it up, threw it the first time, and I fell in love with it, man. It was pretty funny.”
Like many of us, Harrison hit a bit of a crossroads in 2020 when his original freshman track and field season was cut short due to COVID. But he took some time off and came back with a renewed focus on jav that helped him get to where he is today.
“My first year I came out of track and field here my senior year at MMU and then was playing football at Castleton,” he said. “I was kind of doing two sports at once. I was in the best shape of my life, to be honest with you. And then that COVID year hit and I didn’t know if I was gonna go back to school or whatnot. I came back, decided to give it a try, ended up quitting football and just kind of putting all my eggs in one basket with javelin. And it really just took off and I couldn’t be more grateful.”
Leombruno-Nicholson will compete Thursday afternoon at 3 p.m.