After coaching track and field for 20 years, Ali Muhsin started the Philadelphia-based, co-ed Philly Elite Track Club in 2023. Over the decades, the veteran coach never had athletes take part in the Colgate Women’s Games (CWG).
Scheduled to take part in an afternoon New York City track event last November, Mushin left Pennsylvania very early in the morning — early enough to attend a registration session for the 49th annual Colgate Women’s Games and sign up some of his girls to participate in the 2025 series.
“I’m super excited and the girls are too. This is our first year competing in Colgate, but I’ve been hearing about it for years, being in the track world,” Muhsin said at the indoor Nike Track and Field Center at the Armory, which hosted the Colgate Games.
Moving forward, some Philly Elite runners and a shot putter made progress in the series. By the semi-finals in late January, only Aminah Muhsin — the coach’s daughter — was still in the running, besting her competitors as the top point-scorer in the Games’ Elementary A division of the 55-meter dash as the Feb. 1 CWG’s finals approached.
Watch archived videos of individual Colgate Women’s Games’ series events or the entire webcast of Preliminary #1 , Preliminary #2, the Semi-Finals or the Finals, by selecting the “Videos” link in the Media section of each respective series event page. The event page — on the Armory Track.org website — also includes meet results.
In each divisional event, the three top competitors with the greatest number of points for all meets combined will win educational scholarships valued at $2,000, $1,000 and $500, respectively.
“Colgate Women Games has been a tremendous experience,” said Muhsin. “The atmosphere has been awesome, the competition electrifying and our athletes were pumped to receive the Colgate book bags and goodies,” he added, referring to the Colgate-Palmolive health and hygiene products given to participants who register for the series.
In addition to sharing items from its vast product line with the athletes, Colgate also promotes initiatives from its philanthropic arsenal, such as its “Bright Smiles, Bright Futures” oral health education program. However, the main goals of the CWG series are to create a positive and supportive setting for its participants to excel in, and to promote education.
Open to students in elementary school through seniors in college and beyond, the long-running amateur track and field series just completed its 49th successful season this month. In 2026, the Colgate Women’s Games will mark its 50th anniversary. The series’ half-century celebration will recognize these Games’ all-important pro-women messages, and an alumni that includes Olympic athletes and scores of successful professionals in myriad fields.
“There is so much to celebrate with the Colgate Women’s Games after seasons 47 and 48 moved to an outdoor competition due to the pandemic,” said Sally Massey, Chief Human Resources Officer for the Colgate Palmolive Corp., commenting on CWG’s upcoming 50th anniversary. “We were thrilled to return indoors for season 49. And we know that season 50 will be a wonderful celebration of the impact the Games has had and will continue to have on our community.”
However, the 50th milestone celebration will owe a profound debt of gratitude to the late Fred Thompson of Brooklyn, the attorney who sacrificed his legal career to serve as full-time coach of Brooklyn’s Atoms Track Club, the team which he founded on the principles of athletic excellence and academic achievement, and which has served as the model for the Colgate Women’s Games for 49 years.
With Colgate’s commitment, Thompson’s positive mantra that initially empowered inner-city girls from the neighborhood was greatly expanded. Now that message also reaches girls and women in dozens of cities and thousands of suburbs, villages and townships along the East Coast of the U.S. — from Boston to Baltimore and beyond. It’s become an ethnic and economic kaleidoscope, with athletes from all races and income groups.
It’s hard to believe that Thompon’s invaluable Atoms Track Club concept of athleticism and education — that began Colgate’s nearly 50-year-long corporate commitment — was handed to a high-ranking company executive, hand-written on a simple restaurant napkin. But Thompon’s message obviously outweighed its medium of delivery. Today, the Colgate Games are the largest amateur track series for girls and women in the United States!
“So, the Atoms were the model upon which the Colgate Games were founded, because it [the CWG] is based on the principles of athletic and academic excellence,” said Cheryl Toussaint, a former Atoms Track Club member and a U.S. Olympian who became CWG meet director after Thompson retired from the post in 2014. “Those are the two driving initiatives upon which the Atoms existed, and Colgate Women’s Games exist — to make sure that girls have the opportunity to compete, learn to develop their talent in the sport, and take it as far as they can. And then, the other side of that is understanding and instilling the importance of education.”
Said Massey, “Our partnership began in 1974 when Fred Thompson, a U.S. Olympic Track Team coach, accomplished U.S. attorney, sportscaster and founder of the Brooklyn Atoms Track Club, recognized the need for more positive outlets for girls living in underserved neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Colgate-Palmolive has remained the title sponsor for nearly five decades, supporting the program’s mission to empower young girls and women through sports and education.
Colgate received its all-important “athletic and academic excellence” mission from a napkin that Thompson handed to Colgate-Palmolive Chairman and CEO David Foster, after a conversation at luncheon in the old Mama Leone’s Restaurant in midtown Manhattan in the 1970s. “We were at a luncheon at Mama Leone’s, so it was probably a dinner napkin,” Toussaint said, noting that “Freddie didn’t waste any time jotting down his thoughts for a Colgate Women’s Games prototype!” Apparently, Thompson entrusted his concept to the right person.
Newspaper headlines such as “David Foster Emerging as Sponsorship Giant” and “He Gambles on 21st Century Women” ran above a national 1977 Associated Press wire service story that praised Foster for his sponsorship of the Colgate Dinah Shore Winners Circle Golf Tournament, and the infusion of $3 million in prize money for the players. The Colgate Women’s Games, which “drew thousands of female track and field competitors” in 1977, was also mentioned among Foster’s pioneering female-focused sponsorship coup.
Colgate’s conveyance of Thompson’s unyielding focus has produced thousands of positive, inspirational stories:
Machelle Sweeting ran in the fifth Colgate Games, and said it had an amazingly positive effect on her life. She’s now an Acting Justice of the New York State Supreme Court.
Walter Brown, of suburban New Rochelle, N.Y., brought elementary, mid-school and high school students to compete in the first Colgate preliminary meet. Inspired by the Colgate atmosphere, he plans to resurrect his Remington United Flyers track team, which he estimates won “roughly $70 to $75,000 in scholarships” over the years as Colgate finalists. He also says his twin daughters started with Colgate as “8- and 9-year-olds.” They’re now students at State University at Oneonta and Central Connecticut State University.
Then there are the preschool girls sprinting outside the perimeter of the Armory track, emulating the older Colgate athletes and embracing an infectious, “Yes, I can do it” feeling of empowerment.
Thompson, who died at the age 85 in 2019 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, was raised by his uncle and his wife. He would carry his aunt’s sage advice throughout his life. She told him, “Life is two things,” the New York Times reported in Thompson’s obituary. “One, get an education, because once you have a college diploma nobody can take that away from you. And two, get involved with people.”
A runner in high school and college, Thompson attended Brooklyn’s Boys High School, then graduated from City College of New York. He earned a law degree from St. John’s University School of Law in 1958 and then served two years in the U.S. Army as a member of the Judge Advocate General Corps, stationed in the Republic of Panama. In 1961, he was admitted to the New York State Bar. Starting with private practice, he had an impressive legal career — working as “assistant attorney general for the State of New York, staff attorney with ABC-TV, Madison Square Garden and the Federal Trade Commission, as well as doing legal work for the Internal Revenue Service,” his obituary said.
Concerned about the challenges and pressures kids faced in his community, Fred became a volunteer counselor for boys and girls at P.S. 21 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, according to his obituary. Thompson worked as a civilian volunteer with the Police Athletic League (PAL), a nonprofit youth development organization in New York City, and later founded the Atoms Track Club.
“I think once he went into the military and came back, he realized that there weren’t a whole lot of options for kids in our neighborhood; our areas were neglected and run-down,” said Toussaint. “They didn’t have any mindset that there were any other options.”
Anna-Maria Thomas, a PAL runner at the time, recalled that the establishment of the all-girls Atoms came about after Thompson had discussions with Connie Ford, the respected longtime head coach of the PAL’s co-ed track program. “Connie Ford had the only women’s team that was really doing something,” said Thomas, 80, who was recruited by Ford for the PAL girls’ team when she was 13.
Thompson was impressed because Ford’s PAL girls’ track squad had developed a formidable reputation and produced some great athletes. Sprinter Meredith Ellis, the youngest member of the 1956 Olympics team, 1960 Olympic high jumper Barbara Brown and other star athletes were coached by Ford, who became women’s head coach for the U.S. team at the international Pan Am Games in 1963.
Years later, Ford would be selected as head women’s coach for America’s team at the 1968 Olympic Games, and Thompson would be named an assistant coach of the U.S. track team in the 1998 Seoul Olympics.
Looking back, Thomas said, “Our coaches were always good friends. They were best friends. And they had the best female runners in the city,” she added, noting that Thompson and Ford were alumnus of Brooklyn Boys High School.
But before the Atoms were conceived, Thompson approached Ford with a proposal. Thomas recalled, “Freddie asked Connie, ‘Can I work with you on your team?’ and Ford immediately said, ‘No, get your team, so that we have more women. We can deal with two, maybe three, or four teams. We need to address the female athletes that have no place to go. Make your own team!’ That’s how the Atoms came about.”
Initially a co-ed venture, the Atoms became an all-girls team. At the time, girls — unlike boys — did not have school teams and needed opportunities to practice and compete year-round.
Being the top women’s teams in the city, the Atoms and PAL teams would battle fiercely at the track and field meets, but after the competitions, the athletes were friends. “We were competitors only on the track,” said Thomas. “Once we got off the track, we were not competitors; we were good friends.”
In the early days of the Colgate Games, when Thomas was the varsity women’s track coach at St. John’s University in Queens, she brought members of the university’s all-white women’s track team to participate in Colgate events.
“This was in 1975, and I was so excited that I decided to take my entire team to Colgate and have them compete,” said Thomas, noting, “At that time, it was the largest contingency of any team that came to run the Colgate — and it was all white. I just said, ‘Let’s go and run’ to give our team more competition. I was so honored that Freddie appreciated what I did.”
In addition to the corporate sponsorship, over the decades the Colgate Games have been consistently supported by event staffers and volunteers (many of whom are former Atoms and lifelong track aficionados), a professional medical team and hundreds of appreciative parents and coaches.
Kali Council, Colgate staffer for 30 years, eventually became a high school shot putter after getting encouragement and guidance from Jean Bell, a former Atoms team coach. Bell founded the Jeuness Track Club in 1985; her track team includes yoga, aerobic and anaerobic workouts, and international travel for her athletes.
Council, who works as a licensed therapist, a psychotherapist and a social worker, is fully aware of Thompson’s lasting and influential legacy. “If it wasn’t for him, all this [Colgate Women’s Games] would not be here,” she said. “He was the coach of my coaches, so a lot of the training and the mentality is still in all of us because of him.”
For information about the Colgate Women’s Games, sign up for its mailing list at www.colgatewomensgames.com and follow the track and field series on Instagram.