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Wooster track standout Shannon O’Neill was unmatched among her peers in the North Coast Athletic Conference in several events during her dominant run of the early 1990s, as she won 10 championships and was all-conference (top-three) eight other times, even without competing in two outdoor championship meets due to illness and injury, respectively.
Dubbed an “outstanding big-meet performer” by longtime head coach Dennis Rice, O’Neill was always at her best during the NCAC Championship events, including in her conference debut at the 1991 indoor meet. It was there she burst onto the scene, winning the 440-yard dash (1:01.82) and taking third in the 300 yards (39.39), despite entering the meet with little fanfare.
“I will always remember winning my first track event at the indoor championships,” recalled O’Neill. “No one expected it, least of all myself. But after that it seemed people took notice of my running. It was a great feeling – the first of several I had as an individual and as a teammate in relays.”
At the ‘92 indoor championships, O’Neill helped the 880-yard relay to third-place (1:54.74), but it was later that year during outdoor season where she solidified herself among the conference’s finest athletes. Competing in two of track’s glamour events, O’Neill crossed the finish line first in both the 100 meters (12.66) and 200 meters (26.00), with the latter time a then-NCAC Championships record, while also running the anchor of Wooster’s first-place 4x100 relay (50.92) and second-place 4x400 relay (2:08.0).
Next up was the ’93 season, a signature one for O’Neill, as she won five of her 10 conference championships that year and led the Fighting Scots to second-place team scores at both the indoor and outdoor meets. She shined in relays during the indoor championships, where her and her teammates won the 880-yard relay (1:52.81) and mile relay (4:17.59), while individually, she was runner-up in the 55 meters (7.72) and third in the 300 meters (44.02).
That strong momentum carried right over to the outdoor season where O’Neill won the same three events she did at the meet the year prior – the 100 (12.66), 200 (26.26), and 4X100 relay (49.97), while again taking second in the 4x400 relay (4:06.19) as well.
O’Neill’s senior year was cut a bit short, as an injury in the spring of ’94 kept her from competing at the NCAC’s outdoor event. She still made her typical splash at the indoor meet, though, as her 4x400 relay team set a then-conference record by placing first in 4:12.56, and she picked up two more all-conference certificates with third-place efforts in the 55 meters (7.76) and 300 (43.53).
“Shannon had outstanding work ethic, great confidence, and really understood the concept of being a member of a team,” Rice recalled. “She dominated the conference in the sprints, and was a key member of our relay teams, and was right at the edge of qualifying for the national championships in all those events.”
O’Neill, who was voted to the NCAC All-Decade Team (1984-93) in the outdoor 200 meters, was a sociology major at Wooster, and went on to earn a master’s in social work from Case Western Reserve University.
She previously did clinical social work in the neurosurgery department at Strong Memorial Hospital in her hometown of Rochester, N.Y., and now she is a stay-at-home mom to three boys – Colin (8), Brendan (6), and Donovan (5 months). O’Neill and her husband, Dan Olney, live in Iowa City, Iowa, and she remains involved in athletics, especially as a distance runner, having recently qualified for the Boston Marathon.