After a terrific four-year career on the Hillsdale College men's track team, Justin Fawley returned to his alma mater in August 2018, this time as an assistant coach.
Fawley is a familiar name to fans of the Charger track program. He was a multi-event competitor for Hillsdale College from 2010-15. During his career Fawley had a career-best point total of 4,935 in the heptathlon and 6,740 points in the decathlon. He also cleared 2.044 meters in the high jump and finished 16th at the 2014 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
At Hillsdale, Fawley has done excellent work in a short span of time with Hillsdale College's jumps and multi event groups. On the men's side, Fawley helped pole vaulters Jared Schipper and Ben Raffin each earn multiple All-American honors during their time at Hillsdale, and guided Schipper to new Charger records in both the indoor and outdoor pole vault. He's also coached multi event athletes John Baldwin and Ryan Thomsen, who traded the program's indoor heptathlon record back and forth during their time in college, and threatened to break the school's decathalon record as well. Under Fawley's guidance, Thomsen won back-to-back G-MAC conference titles in the Heptathlon and qualified for the 2020 Division II indoor championships. Recently, Fawley also helped coach high jumpers Cass Dobrowolski and Reagan Dahlquist to NCAA DII National Meet berths in the high jump, and Emily Gerdin to new school records in both the indoor and outdoor triple jump. In 2025, Fawley coached Dobrowolski to a new indoor school record in the high jump, and had two of the top nine women's pole vaulters in the nation in NCAA DII at the 2025 Outdoor Championships in All-American Tara Townsend and Kaylee Jackson.
Before returning to Hillsdale, Fawley spent two seasons as a graduate assistant with the track & field program at Michigan Tech University. While in Houghton, he helped to coordinate training for the athletes on the team and helped guide men and women to school records and NCAA-qualifying marks in the sprints, jumps, pole vault and multi events.
Fawley also earned work experience with the Tri-City Storm of the USHL in Kearney, Nebraska and with the Akron Rubberducks. During his undergraduate career at Hillsdale, he was also involved with Athlete Intervarsity and was a member of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee.
