Smith College Athletics

Peter de Villiers is the Sophia and Austin Smith Professor Emeritus of Psychology. He helped a group of undergraduates and a graduate student establish the Smith College Intercollegiate Track and Field program in 1980 and coached the team until 1983. Since his retirement from teaching in 2019 he has enthusiastically returned to assisting with the coaching of the sprinters, hurdlers, and long jumpers.

In his own running career Peter competed in the decathlon and captained the Athletics Team at Rhodes University in South Africa, finishing second and third in the South African Decathlon Championships in 1965 and 1966. As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University he was the President of the Athletics Team in 1969-70 and won the British AAA Decathlon Championships in 1969 and the British Universities Decathlon Championships in 1970. His points totals in those two competitions broke the South African decathlon record. He is particularly proud of the fact that none of the track and field teams he was on in three years at Oxford ever lost to traditional rivals Cambridge University.

In 1987 and 1988 Peter returned to Masters track and field competition, training with the Smith athletes and coached by Mary Grinaker (Smith Athletics Hall of Fame inductee in 2019). He finished second in the age 40-45 pentathlon at the Southeastern US Masters T&F Championships and was ranked fourth in the USA in that age group.

Off the track Peter is an avid perennial flower gardener and vegan baker, spends as many hours as he can in the countryside rockhounding for minerals and fossils, and hangs out with his two grandsons and his wife of 50 years, Jill, who he met at Oxford.