Ceremony to Honor ASU Track & Field Legends Noble & Owusu

The ceremony will take place during the afternoon of April 2 prior to the finals of the running events at ASU’s LeGrand Stadium at 1^st Community Credit Union Field. Joshua Owusu, ASU’s first-ever track and field Olympian (1972), will also be on hand to honor Noble – and for the announcement of a new endowment that bears his name and will benefit the ASU track and field and cross country programs.

The Joshua Owusu Endowment has been established by a generous $160,000 gift from an ASU alum and supporter of ASU athletics who wishes to remain anonymous. The initial $160,000 was gifted by the donor with the hope that additional donors will contribute to help build the endowment to $200,000.

Joshua Owusu A native of Ghana, Owusu is a 1974 ASU graduate. He was a nine-time All-American and won eight total indoor and outdoor national titles in the long jump and triple jump while ASU was a member of the NAIA. He was also a three-time recipient of the Oscar Strahan Award as the top male field athlete at the Lone Star Conference Championships, and he still holds the ASU records for both the triple jump and the long jump. He and Ronnie Hawkins Jr., now president of ASU, were teammates on the 1974 LSC championship team.

Owusu represented Ghana at the 1972 Munich Olympics, finishing fourth in the long jump, and was one of the favorites in that event heading into the 1976 Montreal Olympics until a last-minute boycott of the games by the African nations prevented him from competing. He was inducted into the ASU Athletics Hall of Honor in 2006.

David Noble Noble spent over two decades as head coach of the ASU Rams track and field team (1972-82, 1985-99), also serving as head coach of the Rambelles track and field team for his final six years (1994-99). He guided ASU student-athletes to over 150 All-America performances, and also coached six Academic All-Americans. His teams won eight Lone Star Conference titles, and he was an eight-time LSC Coach of the Year. He also guided the Rams to 17 top-10 national finishes, and the Belles to six straight top-20 national finishes. In 1988, he was named the NCAA Division II National Coach of the Year. He was inducted into the LSC Hall of Honor in 2004, and into the ASU Athletics Hall of Honor in 2008.

In 2001, the long-running Angelo State Relays track and field meet was officially re-named the “David Noble / ASU Relays” in honor of Noble’s many years of service to the ASU track and field programs. The ceremony honoring Noble and announcing the Joshua Owusu Endowment is also part of this year’s “I Chose Angelo State Week” celebration that runs April 1-8 and also includes other special events like “ASU Day at the Rodeo,” as well as various ways for the public to engage with the ASU campus community.