Both
Jud Logan and
Katie Moon are the owners of three consecutive titles in their respective areas of track and field expertise.
Logan, the former Ashland University head track and field coach who passed away at age 62 on Jan. 3, 2022, led the Eagle men to NCAA Division II national titles both indoors and outdoors in 2019, and again indoors in 2021 after Championships resumed following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moon, the AU Hall of Fame pole vaulter who is a Summer Olympic gold and silver medalist for Team USA, recently won her third straight World Athletics women's outdoor pole vault crown – becoming the first woman to ever accomplish the feat.
Both Logan and Moon, who had pillars at the Dwight Schar Athletic Complex dedicated on Friday (Oct. 10) afternoon in a ceremony with hundreds in attendance on a Chamber of Commerce-type weather day, are Ashland University's own.
But the winning is only part of the story.
With Logan, the team and individual national titles, All-Americans and Coach of the Year awards don't come close to telling his story – being at Ashland from 2005-22 as head coach and for 13 years as a throws coach before that.
With Moon, the Olympic medals, world and national championships and No. 1 world rankings are a fraction of her story – which started when she transferred from NCAA Division I Dayton.
"Truly, without Ashland, those wins, those accomplishments, they do not exist for me," Moon said. "There is no pole vault career for me without Ashland. Because of this place, the biggest dream that I ever had, which was winning the Olympics, became a goal, a realistic goal. Just to feel that it was possible was incredible.
"I owe everything to Ashland. I owe everything to this place."
Logan moved to Ashland from North Canton during his coaching tenure with the Eagles, and the result was…
"For my dad, Ashland was home," said
Nate Logan, Jud's son and a former Eagle track and field athlete himself. "The connections he forged here turned friendships into family. He truly viewed the AU track and field family as an extension of our own."
Eagle head track and field coach
A.G. Kruger originally came to Ashland due to Logan – and found out for himself what makes AU great.
"Back in the summer of 2002, I competed at the U.S. Championships out in California," Kruger said, "and I didn't compete very well. All of a sudden, this big guy runs up to me, Jud, 'Hey, what are you doing next year? Well, drop all that and move to Ohio.'
"We're in Conard Field House and I see all the facilities, then we go out to 'The Farm.' The Farm, north of the Fin Feather Fur, there's three acres of land that Britt Troth donated for us to have to throw hammer at. I remember sitting in his office…and he looks at me and stares at me…'If you're not going to make the Olympic team in 2004, don't even bother coming out.' I remember walking out of the office and walking to my car…calling my mom and saying, 'I'm moving to Ashland, Ohio. Whatever he has, I want.'"
And Kruger continues to see what Ashland means to Moon when she returns to campus to compete and train at the Niss Athletic Center.
"She comes back for a meet. What do you want to do after a meet is done," Kruger said. "You don't want to sit there and talk. You don't want to sit there and sign autographs. You don't want to sit there and keep chit-chatting, and stuff like that. You want to be done, you want to go eat.
"It's 10 o'clock at night, but for an hour-and-a-half, two hours, she sits there and signs every autograph, takes every photo, talks to people. That's who she is. That's excellence."
Both Logan and Moon have left a lasting mark on Ashland President
Dr. Jon Parrish Peede – someone who wasn't affiliated with the university while they were here.
"I arrived after the coach and after Katie, after their triumphs as Eagles and Olympians," said Peede. "But every day, as a President, I walk this campus, and I see the manifestation of what they were here, and what they mean and what they are bringing to this campus by their example."
How much did and do Logan and Moon mean to the university as a whole? Let Ashland Director of Athletics
Al King tell you…
"Let me ask you this – how many universities do you know where you had two members of the track and field program serve as the Commencement speaker back-to-back? There's one bigger message that comes through," he said. "What small private school in Ohio, or any other state, or a large university, can take people like Jud Logan and Katie Moon, and point to them?"
There are so many elements to a university that makes it one people want to be a part of, both while they are there and long after they leave. Jud Logan and Katie Moon are two of the best examples of that for Ashland University – because of who they were and who they are, and who AU shaped them into to and what they have shaped AU into in return.
