Liberty to Name Indoor Track in Honor of Legendary Coach
11/16/2021 2:45:03 PM | Track and Field
One of the facilities that he helped build during his historic 34-year coaching career will now bear the name of former Liberty track & field head coach Brant Tolsma.
To honor his commitment and passion to build a nationally recognized track & field program, Liberty will name the track inside the Liberty Indoor Track Complex the Brant Tolsma Indoor Track.
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A ceremony will be planned during the 2021-22 indoor track & field season to publicly recognize Tolsma with this honor.
“The Liberty track and field program has been a hallmark of excellence under the leadership of Coach Tolsma,” said Director of Athletics Ian McCaw. “His astounding number of conference championships and coach of the year awards is unprecedented and the influence he had on student-athletes is extraordinary. We are grateful for the support of President Prevo and the Board of Trustees to honor Coach Tolsma with the naming of the Indoor Track in his honor.”
Liberty added the state-of-the-art indoor track facility to its list of numerous new athletics complexes when the Liberty Indoor Track Complex opened in January 2017.
The 169,000-square-foot complex stands beneath the illuminated monogram on Liberty Mountain, standing as a testament to the standard of excellence Tolsma established for Liberty’s men’s and women’s cross country and indoor and outdoor track & field programs.
The track itself is the facility’s most dynamic feature and one of only a handful of indoor tracks in the U.S. to offer a six-lane, 200-meter, hydraulically banked oval. Other such tracks are located at Navy, Nebraska, Penn State, Texas A&M, and VMI.
The track surface was manufactured by Beynon, the company that also resurfaced Liberty’s outdoor Matthes-Hopkins Track Complex and the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field, which will play host to the World Championships in 2022.
Tolsma closed out his storied coaching career at Liberty (1986-2020) following the 2020 indoor track & field season.
Tolsma was at the helm of Liberty’s cross country and track & field programs for 34 seasons, guiding Liberty’s teams to an astonishing 116 conference championships and coaching six NCAA Division I individual national champions.
Tolsma won a total of 71 Big South Coach of the Year honors, six ASUN Coach of the Year recognitions and twice was named the NCAA District Coach of the Year. Meanwhile, Tolsma's athletes earned a combined 61 All-America honors since the program moved to the NCAA Division I level in 1989.
During the 2009-10 athletic year, Tolsma led Liberty to all six Big South titles (men’s and women’s cross country, indoor track and outdoor track), becoming the 10th different school in NCAA Division I history to accomplish this feat in a single season.
Tolsma guided Liberty to eight consecutive Big South men’s Triple Crowns, as the Flames swept every conference men’s cross country, men’s indoor track & field and men’s outdoor track & field title between fall 2006 and spring 2014. Tolsma and legendary Kansas head coach Bill Easton (1951-59, Big 8 Conference) are the only two coaches ever to lead their teams to eight straight men’s Triple Crowns in an NCAA Division I conference.
