If you win an NCAA championship in Division 1 then most people will consider you the fastest man in college. It’s exactly what Michael Norman did in the 400 meter dash before going on to become a World Champion. But NCAA Division 2 also gives out scholarship dollars, and national championships to the best athletes at that level. In fact, Cordell Tinch was a division 2 athlete in 2023 and was legitimately the best hurdler in college, regardless of division.

In 2024 Jonah Vigil of Adams State University ran 46.54 indoors in the 400 meter dash. That time would be good enough to get him into the NCAA indoor championships in Division 1. That also makes him the D2 national leader by more than half a second! However, he was never really supposed to be this fast! Certainly not in an Adams State uniform, where he competed for his entire college career. That is rare when you consider that the transfer portal gave him a chance to leave more than once. There’s a coach somewhere in D1 right now who had a chance to recruit him, and probably should have. But now he has a chance to not only become a national champion but perhaps make it clear just how much of a mistake they made, by giving all their scholarship dollars to the wrong men!

How did Jonah Vigil end up in Division 2?

Jonah Vigil ending up at Adams State is everything that is wrong with track and field recruiting on display for the world to see. At the high school level, he dominated the state of New Mexico running away with state championships in the 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, and 400 meter dash at the same meet! He actually would have rated as a low 4 star recruit on SCArecruiting.com at the end of his junior year. That means Jonah Vigil was not only really good, but could have helped a lot of D1 teams compete to win their conference. 

Four star recruits perform at a level where it is clear D1 is where they belong and it’s simple math, really. There are only about 500 or so 4 to 5 star recruits in the nation in any given class. That’s across all the events. Keep in mind there are nearly 300 D1 men’s track teams in the country. So the only way for a 4 star recruit to end up outside of D1, is for there to be a bunch of coaches who clearly recruited an athlete who flat out was not as good as he was. Every year some of the 4 star recruits end up outside D1 because seemingly no coach found them. There’s literally only 1 D1 track team in New Mexico that recruits sprinters, so if they didn’t want him, for whatever the reason, his only option was to leave the state.

Evidently Adams State University found him. But Adams State is a legit D2 program. They’re actually in Colorado, competing in the RMAC conference that could easily swap in at the D1 level if you check the results for the. If you don’t believe me, just answer this question, are you really going to miss the Summit League if it disappeared tomorrow? Adams State was a distance running powerhouse for more than a decade, where they won 9 NCAA titles since 2008. But that also means sprinting isn’t their main priority. So a Division 2 school that doesn’t even prioritize sprinting convinced Jonah Vigil to join their team.

How good is Jonah Vigil in college?

The moment he got there, he made his presence felt. He finished second in the 400 meter dash as a freshman in his first indoor conference meet. As a sophomore he won the conference in that event, while making the NCAA indoor championship final in the 200 meter dash instead. Outdoors that year was literally a repeat of the same movie. He won the conference in the 400 and made the D2 finals outdoors. By this point he was already a sub 21 second 200 meter runner. That would have been an ideal time for Jonah to hop into the transfer portal. But he chose to stay at Adams State who came and found him, as a state champion when nobody else prioritized him.

In 2022 he made it back to the NCAA indoor meet for the 200 meter dash and then swept the short sprints for the RMAC conference outdoors winning the 100 and 200 meter dashes. Of course he went back to the NCAAs again, but this time for both of his main events, the 200 and 400 meter dashes. His 2023 season was more of the same where he made the D2 outdoor championships in the 200 and 400 meter dashes. That means he qualified for an NCAA championship meet every year that he had a chance to do it.

All of that brings us now to what just went down. Because in this his final  season in college, (which only exists due to what went down in 2020) Jonah Vigil is still wearing an Adams State uniform. Early in the season he came back to his home state of New Mexico to run on the same track where the D1 indoor championships were held in 2023. There he ran 46.54 in the 400 meter dash. It was not only a new PR, and a D2 leading time by a lot, but it also puts an exclamation point on what I already know to be true.

The Bottom Line

Jonah Vigil was never supposed to be this fast wearing a division 2 uniform! He always belonged in division 1. He runs faster now than almost anyone in the NCAA’s highest division anyway, and does it for a school that doesn’t even make sprinting a major priority. He was a 4 star recruit in a state that honestly doesn’t have many of them. Maybe that’s why nobody even bothered to look for him. But it wasn’t that hard to find him, he was way out in front of the race, at the state championship meet, in every single sprinting event. Adams State may be where Jonah Vigil runs, and things appear to be working out just fine for him, where he can finally win an all-out NCAA championship title. Yet I’m also of the impression that if any D1 coach had offered him a scholarship to leave his home state he would have probably taken it. So for every D1 runner who has already lost to Jonah this season, and to the others who most certainly will. Allow me to apologize on behalf of your coaching staff. They along with every other D1 coach messed up, because all they had to do was ask Jonah to join your team, instead of sprinting for Adams State in Colorado, where he is still way out in front for most of his races, all by himself.

LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, RUN GOOD.

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