Colin Scanlon Stamps His Name on Men's Track and Field Program at Claremont-McKenna

There’s a constant debate among those in the track and field realm about what the hardest event is. There are those who say the 400-meter dash asks an athlete for full body exertion over a prolonged period of time. Then there are those who say adding hurdles to those 400 meters makes that event that much tougher.

Colin Scanlon is very much in the second group.

The Sag Harbor resident, who graduated from the Stony Brook School in 2021, just wrapped up his running career at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, California, where he ran his signature event, the 400-meter hurdles. Scanlon admitted that ever since he began hurdling in his sophomore year of high school, he’s had a love/hate relationship with the event. Even when he discovered while he was an underclassmen in college that he had a partially torn hip ligament from competing in it, Scanlon still wanted to do it.

“No one in my family was meant to hurdle,” he said. “We have poor hip mobility. After my sophomore year, my doctor had said, you’re young, it’s not something that’s going to keep you from doing it, but that I was going to keep tearing the ligament in my hip if I kept hurdling and his recommendation was to stop.”

During his freshman and sophomore years, Scanlon found himself regressing in the hurdles because of the injury. He continued to work with his doctor and physical therapists, and during his junior year regained his footing.

“It’s the worst feeling ever to finish a race, but there’s also no other experience or feeling of running the 400 hurdles,” Scanlon said. “The competitiveness, the intensity, the feeling like hell, but at the same time it’s such an adrenaline thrill. It really unlocks something in me, I guess, because it is one of the hardest events and you are putting yourself out there where not many other people have a lot of to gain from doing something like that.

“Throughout my high school, and then college career, whenever I hit my biggest wall, I somehow encouraged myself to work harder,” Scanlon added. “I knew I had such an opportunity in front of me … I wanted to put in that work and see myself climb to the mountaintop. This is a sport that has changed my life. And I said, how can I apply myself to do that?”

Scanlon persevered through his chronic injury to go on and set records and become an All-American.

Last month at the NCAA Division III Men’s Track and Field Championships at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio, Scanlon, who had just missed making the finals in the hurdles last season, came in second place and finished First-Team All-American in the 400-meter hurdles in 52.48 seconds, which was .22 of a second behind champion Levi Berry of Colby and .15 of a second ahead of third-place Alexander Swann of Middlebury.

Scanlon was also part of the 4x400-meter relay team with Jaden Rattay, Aiden Owens and Ellis DelVecchio that earned Second-Team All-American honors by finishing ninth.

Scanlon graduated from the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men’s track and field team with the program record 51.63 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles, breaking Roman Marenin’s 52.68 seconds that had stood for 20 years (2024), which he did last season to win a Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championship. He’s also ranked No. 2 in CMS history in the 400 meters, a member of the 4x4 that is also second in program history, as well as part of the program’s first distance medley relay team to break 10 minutes (9:54.58) indoors at Boston University in 2023.

Since officially graduating in mid-May, Scanlon admitted he’s been reflecting a lot on his time at Claremont-McKenna and how much he’s grown in the four years since getting to the school, which is located on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

“It’s really been such a journey,” he said. “A lot of adjusting and maturing into the final product. I’ve definitely grown into the person I am today through resiliency, whether it be injuries, relationships, teammates. There’s been a lot of hurdles along the journey, but it’s really been such a rewarding experience.

“To not make the finals last year and to lace up the shoes and start all over and come back this year to get second, it was really tough in a sense because I was one [placement] away from making it last year,” Scanlon continued. “But every year I’ve shown these incremental improvements to where I was in a better position than I was the time before so it nice to know that the work is never done, there’s always an opportunity to work, to get better, and how hard it’s been. It’s really been a humbling process and I’ve grown a lot from it.”

Having lived on the West Coast for the past four years, Scanlon said, it’s safe to say, he’s a California guy now, which is funny to think about now. There were times as an underclassmen, he said, when he was homesick. And there was certainly an adjustment period to basically not having any type of real seasons there.

But his roots will always be back in Sag Harbor, Scanlon said.

“[California] made Sag Harbor feel even smaller than it already does, but that also made it feel more special than I originally thought it was,” he said. “I’m never sad to come back home.”

A government and film studies dual major, Scanlon had many opportunities to help make a decision on what his next path in life would be. He spent a semester on the hill in Washington, D.C., as a press intern for New York State Senator Chuck Schumer, for which he had the opportunity to work with a lot of news outlets. After that experience, he thought he was going to go back to the nation’s capitol.

But the following summer, Scanlon landed an internship with CBS L.A., during which he got a glimpse of the entertainment industry. And about a week before nationals last month, Scanlon landed a job with a small independent movie and television talent studio, of which the president of the company just so happens to be a CMC graduate. So Scanlon will be moving back to L.A. in the coming weeks to work there.

“I met so many amazing people and built so many lasting relationships, especially coming out of COVID. There are friends and teammates who are far and away the best thing about college,” he said. “The people I’ve met are really what have made the experience so unique and special and I’m going to miss them all. I walk away with the hope of taking all the best parts of those people and to be more like them, but in some ways the journey really does start with me. It’s on me to be the person I want to be, but I really do owe a lot to all of those people I’ve met along the way and to remember them as I continue to grow into myself.”