On Thornton's plaque: He ran with some of the greatest teams in program and Ivy League history, including captaining the 1971 cross country team that still held the Ivy Heps record for points (19) at the time of his induction and finished third at NCAAs. Part of four Ivy Heps track championship teams, he led the 1971 Outdoor Ivy Heps winning the mile and 2 mile as Penn ended Harvard's nine-year run as champions. Three-time NCAA Championships qualifier on the track, he graduated with four individual records and as part of five record-setting relay groups. Finishing 6th at the National AAUs, he ran Penn's first 4-minute mile. He coached in both programs including head cross country coach 1979-82 and was a Penn Relays official for more than 40 years.
 
by Joe Juliano
 
Karl Thornton learned the meaning of hard work growing up in Binghamton, N.Y. He developed a work ethic that helped him be successful as a track athlete at Penn where he and his fellow Quakers dominated the sport in the 1970s in an historic way.
 
"I think that's part of growing up in a blue-collar environment like Binghamton," Thornton said. "Of course, everybody in my family was hard-working, but so were most of the neighbors and the kids in the community. It was a diverse community, and we never even knew what the word diverse meant. We were just kids, and we all played on the playgrounds and did stuff together."
 
Thornton's efforts on and off the track were a major factor in the success of Penn's track and field and cross-country programs in a career that ranged from 1968 to 1972. He set 18 program records. At the time of his graduation, he held individual school records, in the indoor mile as well as the outdoor 800, outdoor mile and outdoor two-mile. He also anchored five record-setting relay teams.
 
In cross-country, he captained the 1971 team that won the program's first Ivy Heptagonal title with 19 points, still an Ivy Heps record for low score. Later that season, the Quakers finished third—their best finish ever—at the NCAA Championships.
 
Thornton made his mark away from the track as well, taking a strong leadership role as captain of the cross-country team in 1971 and the outdoor track team in 1972. His teams set the table for what would be a prosperous decade for the track & field program, as Penn won seven straight and nine of 10 Ivy Heptagonal outdoor championships from 1971 through 1980.
 
The leadership came naturally.
 
"Each individual, when they get to college, finds a different environment," he said. "Some people are immediately successful and other people struggle sometimes. It's your first time away from home. So I think just the fact that everybody looked out for everybody else and helped to answer the questions and were there to support each other when people needed help academically or socially or just generally."
 
Julio Piazza, Thornton's long-time teammate and friend, called him "an instrumental factor in laying the foundation for the glory years of Penn track starting in 1968 when we matriculated all the way up to 1980."
 
"The thing that stands out about Karl, he was just exceptionally motivated," Piazza said. "He set extremely high goals and worked hard to achieve those goals, and I think that commitment to excellence was not only beneficial to him—because he had that outstanding success—but his commitment to hard work was an example for everybody else to follow. I think that was one of the contributing factors to his own success, but also the team's success."
 
Thornton, 74, will be honored for his outstanding career later this month when he is inducted as a member of Class XIII into the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame.
 
Thornton grew up playing Little League and Babe Ruth baseball and turned to basketball and football as he entered Binghamton Central High School. Later, his basketball coach, Allen Cave, who also led the track team, convinced him to try that sport.
 
Thornton began as a quarter-miler, then advanced to the half mile. Central broke the school record in the two-mile relay by "10 or 12 seconds," he said, and finished third in the state in the sprint medley relay. His times caught the attention of Penn coach Jim Tuppeny, who was recruiting outstanding athletes at the time and convinced Thornton to join him.
 
"Tupp was a very good recruiter, and he said what a great program we were going to have," Thornton said. "He said, 'If you come to Penn, we'll set the world record in the two-mile relay.' Of course, we never got near it, but it was a good line anyway."
 
Freshmen were not allowed to compete when Thornton entered Penn. As he and his classmates followed the action that year, they were stunned to learn that the Quakers had scored just two points at the 1969 Indoor Ivy Heptagonal Championships.
 
"We looked at each other and said, 'Whoa, did we make a mistake coming here?'" he said. "But the same team then finished third at Outdoor Heps.
 
"The next year, when we were sophomores, we were, I think, third in cross country, second indoors and second outdoors. As juniors, we won everything, and Penn dominated the Ivy League for the next 10 or 12 years. It's such an incredible experience to go with a program that's doing nothing and, by the time you leave, it's absolutely dominant. That's a fortunate experience."
 
The Quakers swept the Indoor and Outdoor Ivy Heps in 1971 and 1972, and the Indoor and Outdoor IC4A championships in 1972. Thornton captured the mile and 2-mile events at the 1971 Outdoor Heps and later anchored the victorious 4x800 relay that clinched the team title, ending Harvard's nine-year run as the top Ivy team. He also anchored the 2-mile relay team at the 1972 Indoor Heps.
 
He also qualified for three NCAA championships—two indoor, one outdoor. Besides Penn's third-place finish in the 1971 NCAA Championships in cross-country, he scored for Quakers teams that finished eighth at the national meet in 1969 and 22nd in 1970.
 
As for memories of some of his accomplishments, Thornton was a junior on the team that won its first Ivy Heps championship since 1939, running a valuable anchor leg on the victorious two-mile relay team, the meet's penultimate event.
 
"Julio was running third and he had gotten the stick probably third or fourth," he said. "But he passed a couple of guys and handed off to me in second. We wound up winning the race and that ensured the championship.
 
"Also my junior year, we wound up getting a couple of second places. Usually you don't get excited about second place but it was the first time we were competitive in the distance medley and the four-mile relays at the Penn Relays. Marty Liquori anchored Villanova, and in each case they had about a 20- to 30-yard lead when I got the stick. The races turned out to be closer than that. It was exciting."
 
Perhaps Thornton's crowning achievement came after graduation when he participated in the 1974 Ben Franklin Mile at Penn Relays. He had been a full-time teacher while coaching track and cross-country at Radnor High School, and he said a running career "was kind of difficult to manage back then."
 
"But I had a real opportunity to get into the race because it was just a phenomenal field, and I kind of said to myself, 'Well, if you can't run well here, you should probably retire,'" he said. "But I had a good race."
 
He finished third behind winner Tony Waldrop and former Penn star Denis Fikes but the real joy came in his time: 3 minutes, 57.9 seconds, the only sub-4 mile of his career.
 
"I had run a 4:00.8 at the national AAUs as a junior, but this was great," he said.
 
A year earlier, Thornton competed in the inaugural Penn Relays marathon and won with a time of 2 hours, 32 minutes, 7 seconds. He competed mostly in distance races until 1978 and went into coaching—head coach of Penn men's cross-country from 1979 through 1982, and a track & field assistant coach from 1978-82.
 
Thornton worked as a Penn Relays official for more than 40 years, from 1975 "right up until now, with the exception of a couple of years," he said.
 
In addition to his undergraduate degree in computer science, Thornton earned a master's in education in 1973 and a business certificate from Wharton in 1978. After his coaching career, he worked in information technology for about 20 years, then started a company that developed digital learning products for young children and sold them in public libraries.
 
Ask him to speak about his track career, however, and Thornton becomes extremely modest.
 
"I don't think I had any greater impact than a lot of the very good and excellent athletes who went through that program," he said. "I think I was just one of the guys."
 
As for the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame: "It's just a really great honor. Clearly there is a company of phenomenal athletes, so to be included is special."
 
Piazza, though, is quick to sound the trumpet in honor of his friend.
 
"It was his commitment to excellence and hard work that you pass on to the next generation," he said. "Penn won every outdoor Ivy League track and field championship in the 1970s. Karl laid the foundation for the hard work and commitment that you need to have in order to achieve that type of team success."