Plattsburgh State Athletics

When the dust settled at the end of his career, Mike Heymann became the most decorated athlete in the history of the Plattsburgh State cross country and track and field programs.

He is one of just 85 runners in the history of Division III cross country to earn three All-America honors, with his top finish of fifth coming during his senior year at the 2010 NCAA Championships.

On the track, he was a four-time All-American, with two honors coming from the indoor national championships and two coming from the outdoor national championships.

The Tully, N.Y., native was named to the SUNYAC All-Decade Team in both cross country and track and field in addition to being selected as the Plattsburgh State Male Athlete of the Year and the Plattsburgh State Senior Achievement Award winner in 2010-11.

Date of Induction into Cardinal Sports Hall of Fame:
October 13, 2023

Where is he now: 

Currently, Mike is the head cross country coach and assistant track and field coach at Nazareth University in Rochester, N.Y. He began coaching at Nazareth 10 years ago as a graduate assistant while pursuing his master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages. 

Mike, who currently resides in Rochester, N.Y., cites the growth of the Nazareth cross country and track and field programs as his greatest professional achievement over the past 10 years. The program was only founded in 2003 and “as most new programs do, struggled to compete with more established cross country and track and field programs.” He says that it’s not just being a part of the building process of Nazareth into an established program, but also a respected program. Mike says that it is also watching it start mean something to current student-athletes, their parents and alumni each and every year.

Favorite Plattsburgh State Sports Moment: 

“My freshman year of cross country, as a team, we placed 15th at the Atlantic Regional Cross Country Championships. The next year, we placed fifth at Regionals and qualified for NCAAs. As a group, we were not only motivated by the 2007 Plattsburgh State women’s cross country team that placed second at NCAAs, but we also took inspiration from the Plattsburgh State men’s cross country teams of the 1990s. We were not a team made up of state qualifers or even top runners from our respective Sections, but over the course of a year, we had a group of guys that wanted to put in the work to be more and accomplish something that had not been done since 1999.”