Shortly after completing a 31-year tenure as the coach of the Towson men’s lacrosse program, Carl Anthony Runk was celebrated widely for his accomplishments.

He was inducted into the Towson Hall of Fame in 2007, the Intercollegiate Men’s Lacrosse Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2018, the University of Arizona Men’s Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2019 and received the John F. Steadman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Maryland State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022. But according to his son, Keith Runk, Mr. Runk downplayed the accolades.

“He would say, ‘I haven’t cracked an egg in my life, and they’re recognizing me with this,’” his son said. “He never did anything for the recognition. He did it for the love of it.”

Mr. Runk, who shepherded the Tigers from NCAA Division II to Division I status and the 1974 Division II national championship, died Sunday of pancreatic cancer at his home in Baltimore. He was 88.

From 1968 to 1998, Mr. Runk compiled a 262-161 record that included that national title against Hobart, seven consecutive College Division Tournament berths from 1973 to 1979, an appearance in the 1991 Division I Tournament final against North Carolina, five East Coast Conference championships and 24 seasons with winning records.Tony Seaman, who succeeded Mr. Runk at Towson and met him as rivals when the former coached at Penn and Johns Hopkins, described his predecessor’s legacy as “long-lasting.”

“I’ll always remember how well his teams were coached and how well his players played for him,” Seaman said. “They loved him, and they’d give everything in the world. You knew that you would get a game from beginning to end anytime you played against a Carl Runk team.”

One of 13 children raised by George and Anna Runk and Josephine McGill in Highlandtown, Mr. Runk grew up working on tugboats and picking beans on farms on the Eastern Shore, according to his son.

“They kicked and scratched for everything they got,” Keith Runk said. “Just making ends meet to get through and help the family out.”

After graduating from Patterson Park High, Mr. Runk attended the University of Maryland on a football scholarship for a year-and-a-half before transferring to the University of Arizona, where he was an offensive tackle. Already married to the former Joan Johns who also graduated from Patterson Park, Mr. Runk squeezed in earning a master’s degree and teaching at an area high school between two stints coaching men’s lacrosse for the Wildcats.

After the births of sons Carl, Keith and Curt, Mr. and Mrs. Runk decided to return to Maryland after Curt contracted spinal meningitis and lost his hearing. Upon his return, Mr. Runk joined what was formerly known as Towson State College to coach lacrosse.

Mr. Runk added football to his coaching responsibilities when the coach quit before the program’s debut in 1969. In three seasons, the Tigers went 11-14-1 under Mr. Runk, who handed the reins to one of his assistant coaches, Phil Albert.

Lacrosse is where Mr. Runk made his greatest impact. From 1968 to 1979, Mr. Runk amassed a 115-63 at the NCAA Division II level with only one losing season. His crowning achievement was shaping the 1974 squad into a group that outlasted Hobart, 18-17, in overtime for the NCAA Division II championship.

Tom Moore, a midfielder and co-captain of that 1974 team, said Mr. Runk insisted on a culture absent of favoritism.

“The ones that didn’t buy into the culture, they had to work harder to get into the starting lineup,” he said. “Some of them did, and some of them decided to quit. The bottom line was we expected everybody to work really hard and we expected everybody to be a team player.”

Keith Runk, who played goalkeeper for the Tigers from 1979 to 1982, said his father extended that expectation to his son.

“There was no special treatment,” he said. “When I was on the field, I was a player. I wasn’t his son. I was no better or no worse. But on the way home, it was different. He was dad.”

Members of Towson and Hobart and their parents dined together on the eve of the 1974 title game. While the Hobart coach praised his players’ efforts and dedication, Mr. Runk took a different approach.

“Coach Runk got up there in front of our parents, and he started making fun of all of us. He was saying, ‘I don’t know how these kids got into school because their SAT scores weren’t really that good,’” Moore said with a laugh. “This was one of the most intense moments we all had because we were looking at the guys we had to fight against the next day, and he’s got everybody in tears and laughing by making fun of us. And we didn’t mind it because we knew he was doing it to just have a good time.”

Mr. Runk had a certain command of his teams. Tensions always ran high between Towson and Maryland. So when a skirmish broke out during a scrimmage between the area rivals in 1980, the Tigers players were more than willing to jump into the fray.

“Our entire bench started to run out on the field, and Coach Runk turned around and put up his hand, and you never saw 40 guys stop on a dime like that in your life,” said former Baltimore Sun sports editor Gerry Jackson, who was a defenseman for Mr. Runk from 1978 to 1981. “The kind of respect he had from the team was amazing.”

After back-to-back 5-7 records in 1997 and 1998, Mr. Runk was not retained by Towson, which hired Seaman after he had been let go by Johns Hopkins. While Seaman quipped that Mr. Runk was too upset with the administration to take out his anger on Seaman, the latter said Mr. Runk was always supportive.

“We were such good friends that it never came up,” said Seaman, who had known Mr. Runk since Seaman was a coach at a high school on Long Island where Mr. Runk often visited to recruit players. “He never felt bitter toward me. He knew that I needed the job.”

Mr. Runk enjoyed playing musical instruments such as the guitar, banjo and harmonica and was a member of a barbershop quartet while he was a student at Arizona. But next to lacrosse, he prioritized his family.

In 1978, Mr. Runk took a partial sabbatical to enroll at Gallaudet University and sign up for classes in sign language, audiology and the sociology of deafness. The following year, he taught basic sign language at Towson at least once per semester for 20 years.

“It was important for him to teach people how to communicate with those who were hard of hearing,” his son said. “It was a tribute to the care that he had for the family and for people in similar positions. It wasn’t just about us or him.”

Mr. Runk is survived by three sons (Carl, of Burke, Virginia; Keith, of Bel Air; and Curt, of Jacksonville, South Carolina), one daughter (Brenda Parker, of Ocean City), three brothers (Alfred, of Forest Hill, David, of Tampa, Florida, and Ted, of San Francisco), two sisters (Joan, of Daytona, Florida; and Donna, of Port Richey, Florida), 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

The family will hold a private service. A celebration of Mr. Runk’s life is planned for a later date.

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