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How It Came Together - The National High School Track and Field Hall of Fame

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DyeStat.com   Mar 2nd 2018, 3:56am
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National High School Track and Field Hall of Fame -

A Look At the Inaugural Class And How It Came Together

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

The idea of starting a National High School Track and Field Hall of Fame had been bandied about for a few years.

But it was about 12 months ago that TrackSmith marketing executive and National Scholastic Athletics Foundation board member Josh Rowe approached executive director Jim Spier and said, “We gotta do this.”

Spier agreed that the time was right and Rowe took charge of it, organizing a strategy to get the wheels in motion.

WATCH THE NSAF NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL TRACK AND FIELD HALL OF FAME CEREMONY LIVE ON MARCH 8

First, Rowe made a list of the top high school track historians in the U.S. and then began to contact them.

“Every single person we talked to was thrilled and honored to be a part of this,” Rowe said. “To have those brains and the most notable historians in the sport, if that hadn’t come through that would have made this more difficult.”

With Spier, Marc Bloom, Jack Shepard, Walt Murphy, Jack Pfeifer, Dave Johnson, Bob Jarvis, Mike Kennedy, Marjorie Larney, Joe Lanzolotto and Tracy Sundlun assembled as an all-star panel, Rowe began to develop some guidelines ahead of the nomination and voting process.

“One of our biggest challenges was how do you compare someone from the 1920s to the 1990s?” Rowe said. “So we decided, OK, we want a broad initial class that cuts across the breadth of gender, different events and across eras.”

The first mission was to assemble a list of the most prominent and important athletes by decade and then divide them in an appropriate manner across a timeline that spans more than a century.

Rowe said the targeted number for the first class of athletes was 20-40 and the results of a vigorous process of voting and discussion produced an inaugural group of 25. Another category, for coaches and contributors, will induct four into the first class. DyeStat founder John Dye is one of them, along with longtime newspaper reporter Ed Grant and the first two coaches – Joe Newton of York IL and Don Norford of Long Beach Poly CA.

“It got really hard who we left off,” said Rowe, who organized the process but did not vote. “There are some incredible athletes that aren’t in the (first) class. It really became about, did they move the sport while in high school?”

One of the distinctions about the new hall of fame is that while, yes, many of the athletes went on to stardom in college and in the Olympics, they were all evaluated by their high school achievements.

The names on the list are outliers to be sure. Athletic marvels. Some of them also became cultural icons, were activists for social change, trailblazers for gender and racial equality. Several of them are the subjects of movies and books.

So what did it take to earn a prestigious spot in the inaugural class?

They were record-breakers, for sure, but they also rose up quickly to become prominent on the U.S. and world stages as teenagers. Some were blessed by fortuitous timing, able to make an Olympic team as they were coming of age as upperclassmen or graduates.

“How they compared to the best in the world at the time was an important factor,” Rowe said.

For some, the timing worked out perfectly so that they could qualify for Olympic teams, and even win medals that they could return home with and show high school classmates. They are all carriers of a baton that has been passed down from one generation of athletes to another, pushing the boundaries of the sport along the way.

Here is a closer look at the first class of inductees, who will be enshrined at a ceremony March 8 at the New York Athletic Club.

For more information, check out nationalhighschooltrackandfieldhof.org

 

Ted MeredithTed Meredith   

Mercersburg Academy, Mercersburg, PA, 1912

Unlike today, it wasn’t uncommon 100 years ago for students to graduate high school in their early 20s. And back then, age restrictions weren’t yet in place and did not usually affect eligibility.

Regardless, Meredith became the best young mid-distance runner of his day while moving through three high schools in Philadelphia. He finally graduated from Mercersburg Academy (and the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades) at 20 years old in 1912 and then qualified for the Olympic Games in Stockholm later that summer.

He won two gold medals, setting a world record in the 800 meters (1:51.9) and running on the winning U.S. 4x400 relay.  

 

Sol Butler            

Rock Island HS, Rock Island, IL, 1915        

Sol ButlerThe son of a slave, Sol Butler was a versatile athlete who was one of the first African-Americans to rise to prominence in sports. While access was limited 100 years ago, Butler was a standout high school football player and track and field athlete. First, as a junior at Hutchinson KS, Butler broke an unofficial world record in the 50-yard dash.

He moved, along with his coach, to Rock Island IL for his senior year. He set a high school record of 24 feet, 2.50 inches in the long jump that lasted for nine years.

Butler, like Meredith, graduated from high school at 20.

At Dubuque College in Iowa, Butler continued to break barriers by quarterbacking his college football team for four years. After an appearance in the 1920 Olympic Games, where he suffered an injury and lost his chance at a long jump gold medal, he played football in the NFL. 

 

Lee Barnes         

Hollywood HS, Los Angeles, CA, 1924

Lee BarnesLee Barnes was the Armand “Mondo” Duplantis of his day.

As a 17-year-old high school senior, he became the first high school pole vaulter to clear 13 feet – in an era with bamboo poles and sawdust landing pits – and pushed the prep record to 13-2. Then he went to the Olympic Trials and tied for first and earned a trip to Paris, where he won a gold medal (with 12-11.50).

Fun fact about Barnes: He appears in a silent movie called “College” (1927) in which he vaults into a second story window as a stunt double for actor Buster Keaton. YOUTUBE CLIP

                 

 

Frank Wykoff    

Glendale HS, Glendale, CA, 1928              

Frank WykoffFrank Wykoff was the best high school sprinter in the country during the 1920s and was the first prep to run 9.5 seconds for the 100 yards. That stood as a record until Jesse Owens came along five years later.

A Des Moines, Iowa native, Wykoff went on to make the U.S. Olympic team in the 4x100 relay three times and won gold medals in 1928, 1932 and 1936 (anchoring a team that included Owens).

Straight out of high school, at 19, he finished fourth in the 100 meters at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. He was fourth again in the 1936 Olympic 100 final.  

 

Betty Robinson

Betty Robinson

Thornton Township HS, Harvey, IL, 1929

Betty Robinson was an instant hit when she began sprinting at 16 years old, a high school junior in the Chicago suburbs. Her third 100-meter race happened to be the Olympic final in Amsterdam, where she became the first female gold medal winner at the Games.

She ran 12.2 at the Olympics for a new world record. As a senior in 1929, she set more records in the 100 yards (11.2 and 11.1).

DreamWorks owns the movie rights and may be choosing the right time to go into production with a film about her life story. She nearly died in a plane crash in 1931 and emerged from a seven-month coma to walk again, and eventually run again, and make the 1936 Olympic team. She won her second gold medal as a member of the victorious 4x100 relay.   

                 

Cornelius JohnsonCornelius Johnson          

Los Angeles HS, Los Angeles, CA, 1933   

Cornelius Johnson was an 18-year-old high school junior when he competed at the Olympic Games in the high jump in his hometown. Johnson finished fourth under existing tiebreaker rules, but using the modern system for breaking ties he would have earned the silver medal.

Johnson broke the national high school record with a leap of 6-6.50 and a year later raised it to 6-7. That mark would be matched four times, but not exceeded until 1955.

Johnson went on to break the world record at the 1936 Olympic Trials when he cleared 6-9.75. He won a gold medal in Berlin.  

 

Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens     

East Tech HS, Cleveland, OH, 1933           

Not only is Jesse Owens one of the most important Olympic heroes of all-time, he was also one of the most sensational high school athletes in U.S. history.

At East Tech, he achieved a long jump mark of 24-11.25 in 1933 that stood as the national high school record for 16 years.

He was the first high school boy to run 9.4 in the 100 yards, which equaled the world record. That record, set at the National Scholastic Championships in Chicago in 1933, would not be surpassed until 1967. Also in Chicago, he ran 20.7 seconds in the 220 yards for a high school record that lasted 20 years.

His later exploits at Ohio State and in Berlin (four gold medals) cemented his status as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. The 2016 movie “Race” details his life, achievements, and struggles against racial discrimination. 

 

Helen StephensHelen Stephens               

Fulton HS, Fulton, MO, 1935 

At a time when high school girls athletics was virtually non-existent, Helen Stephens emerged in Missouri as a powerful club athlete and became the fastest woman in the world.

She was the first high school girl to run under 12 seconds in the 100 meters, pushing her best time all the way down to 11.6 less than a year after taking up the sport. She broke the world record in the 200 meters by clocking 24.4.

Stephens was also a thrower. She gets credit as the high school record holder in the shot put at 36-9 and discus at 111 feet (at a time when there were virtually no female throwers).

Dubbed the Fulton Flash, Stephens never lost a footrace in her career, and that included a gold medal performance in the 100 meters in Berlin at the age of 18.

Stephens and Robinson were teammates on the gold-medal winning 4x100 relay in Berlin as well.  

 

Eddie MorrisEddie Morris     

Huntington Beach HS, CA, 1940 

Eddie Morris was a sensational California sprinter who drew comparisons to Owens when he matched the national records in the 100 meters (10.4) and the 220 yards (20.7). After winning California state titles, the Huntington Beach Bullet placed fourth at the AAU senior meet and finished the year ranked fifth in the world.

Morris lost his chance at Olympic glory due to the World War II cancellations of the 1940 and 1944 Games, but his high school achievements endured and were the best of his era.  

 

Alice Coachman

Alice Coachman               

Tuskegee Prep School, Tuskegee, AL, 1942         

Tuskegee was an important site of African-American political and educational advancement in the segregated South and it was the place that launched the pioneering track career of Alice Coachman.

She participated on one of the few high school track teams for girls, and she cleared 5 feet, 4 inches in the high jump in both 1939 and 1940. No high school girl went higher until 1963. She was also the best sprinter in the country, though few paid attention because of World War II.

In 1948, at the London Games, she won the high jump to become the first African-American woman to win a gold medal at the Olympics. That came during a stretch where she was the AAU national champion for 10 years in a row. 

 

Bob Mathias

Bob Mathias      

Tulare HS, Tulare, CA, 1948         

It seems almost inconceivable now that a 17-year-old high school kid could win an Olympic decathlon title, but Bob Mathias did it and became a national hero.

Mathias lived a life that was the stuff of dreams and he was one of the first examples of a teen idol to emerge in the post-war U.S.

After overcoming a variety of childhood health problems, Mathias worked at mastering track and field events – the high jump, the discus and the hurdles. As a junior, he placed fifth in the CIF shot put finals.

In 1948, as a senior, he won state titles in the 120-yard hurdles, the 180-yard hurdles and placed fourth in the shot put. His coach suggested he try the decathlon and his first one was the Southern Pacific AAU Championships, which he won with 7,094 points though he had never competed in four of the 10 events. He won the Olympic Trials and then won again at cold, wet Wembley Stadium at the London Games.

He went on to break the world record in the decathlon in 1950 and became a back-to-back Olympic champion in 1952. He also starred on the football field for Stanford and played in the Rose Bowl.

He was a U.S. Marine Corps officer. He had a brief movie career, including a starring role in a film about his own life. Then he became a four-term U.S. Congressman. 

 

Milt Campbell

Milt Campbell   

Plainfield HS, Plainfield, NJ, 1953                

Milt Campbell was one of the greatest all-around athletes of the 20th century and his exploits in track and field were only part of the story.

In 1952, the high schooler practically retraced the steps of Mathias four years earlier. At 18, he made the Olympic Games in the decathlon after his junior year of high school and finished in the silver medal position behind Mathias.

In high school, Campbell was a star athlete in football, track and field, and swimming. He broke the national high school record in the 120-yard hurdles (14.0) and held the record for five years.

By 1956, no one could top Campbell. He became the first African-American to win the Olympic decathlon title. Campbell played one season for the Cleveland Browns and was in the same backfield as Jim Brown. He played seven years in the Canadian Football League.

Bud Greenspan, the famous Olympic documentarian, told the New Jersey Star-Ledger in 2000, “Campbell was, to me, the greatest athlete who ever lived.” 

 

Willye WhiteWillye White     

Broad Street HS, Shelby, MS, 1957          

Willye White achieved fame as a high school long jumper at a time when there were few opportunities for African-American girls in segregated Mississippi.

At 16 in 1956, White broke her first high school national record when she jumped 18-6 at the AAU Girls Championships. At the Olympic Trials she improved to 19-3.75. She placed second and earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic team and went to the Games in Melbourne, Australia and broke the American record with 19-8.25 to claim silver.

After a childhood spent picking cotton, White upset convention by continuing to pursue sport beyond her high school years. White made an unprecedented five Olympic teams from 1956-72 and earned another silver medal in Tokyo in 1964 as a member of the U.S. 4x100 relay team. 

 

Dallas LongDallas Long         

North Phoenix HS, Phoenix, AZ, 1958   

Dallas Long was the dominant high school thrower of his day and broke the national record in the shot put four times as a senior in 1958. His best prep mark of 69-3 remains the Arizona all-time outdoor best 60 years later, although there is a chance that Tyson Jones of Desert Edge could break it this spring.

Long’s national record with the 12-pound shot lasted for nine years. His strength at such a young age – he threw 61 feet with the 16-pound sphere – astonished the track community.

Long’s 1957 North Phoenix team didn’t win the state title, but it did include a total of three individuals who would break national high school records (Jim Brewer in the pole vault in 1957 and Karl Johnstone in the discus in 1959).

Long made the 1960 Olympic team and took bronze in the shot put. Four years later, at Tokyo, Long won the gold medal. 

 

Gerry Lindgren

Gerry Lindgren 

Rogers HS, Spokane, WA 1964

The Spokane Sparrow, Gerry Lindgren was a monument to effort and determination who captured imaginations in high school and helped turn Spokane, Wash., into a distance running hotbed.

Lindgren had a difficult home life and was not athletic upon his arrival to Rogers High School. But with a little encouragement from coach Tracy Walters, Lindgren leaped into distance training volumes that were unheard of at the time. By running up to 150 miles a week, he pushed himself into become a national sensation.

In the winter of his senior year, Lindgren ran an indoor 2-mile in San Francisco and beat world record holder Ron Clarke with a time of 8:40. It was one of the landmark achievements in high school running and it remained the national high school record lasted until Edward Cheserek broke it in 2013.

He smashed high school records in the 5,000 (13:44.0) and the 10,000 (29:17.6) that lasted for many years. He famously beat a pair of veteran Soviet Union athletes in the 10,000 in front of 50,000 fans in Los Angeles at a U.S.-USSR dual meet. Lindgren won the Olympic Trials in the 10,000 at 18 years old, but an ankle injury hampered him in Tokyo and he took ninth while teammate Billy Mills won a historic gold.

He went on to win 11 NCAA titles at Washington State.

 

Jim Ryun

Jim Ryun

East HS, Wichita, KS 1965

Jim Ryun’s achievements as a junior and senior at East High School in Wichita, Kansas were surreal and made him a household name and national hero.

Just 10 years after Roger Bannister shattered the four-minute barrier, the 11th-grade Ryun ran a U.S. prep record 4:01.7 and then lowered it to 3:59.0. He was just the 13th American to break four minutes and he was only 17. He also ran 3:39.0 in the 1,500 meters for another high school record and he made the Olympic Team.

As a senior, Ryun ran 3:58.3 for the mile at the Kansas state meet – still to this day the fastest ever in a high school-only race. At the end of his senior season he beat world record holder Peter Snell in San Diego by running 3:55.3 – an American record and a high school record that lasted for 36 years.

Ryun earned a silver medal in the 1968 Olympics in the 1,500. He broke six world records. Like Mathias, he transitioned from track and field fame to politics. He served Kansas in the U.S. Congress from 1996-2007. 

 

Pre

Steve Prefontaine

Marshfield HS, Coos Bay, OR 1969

With a template for high school running stardom laid out by Lindgren and Ryun, others were eager to follow the example. From an unlikely blue-collar town on the Oregon coast, Steve Prefontaine became another distance running phenom at the close of the 1960s.

Prefontaine, too small for football, turned to running to make his mark. He ran the hills of Coos Bay and pushed himself up and over sand dunes. He became the best high school runner in Oregon as a junior and then set his sights on the national record in the 2-mile as a senior. At the Corvallis Invitational, Prefontaine ran 8:41.5 to smash the outdoor record by nearly seven seconds.

His brash, front-running style connected with audiences and he became a cult hero at the University of Oregon. At 21, he finished fourth in the 5,000 meters at the Munich Games in 1972. He held every American record from 2,000 to 10,000 meters before his tragic death in a car accident in 1975, just a mile east of Hayward Field.

He has been memorialized by the annual Prefontaine Classic and his story has remained alive and vibrant thanks to books and movies, and Nike marketing, for more than 40 years. “Pre” remains one of the most inspirational figures in high school running.

 

Lynn BjorklundLynn Bjorklund

Los Alamos HS, Los Alamos, NM 1975

Title IX became law in 1972 and opened up a new world of opportunity for high school girls in the 1970s. Lynn Bjorklund wasn’t really thinking about that, or taking advantage of it. She just liked to run on the trails around Los Alamos, N.M.

The timing helped and Bjorklund’s exploits in the early 1970s helped pave the way to a new era. As a high school junior she ran a pair of 2-mile national records in AAU meets, getting down to 10:11.1. In the fall of her senior year, she qualified for the World Cross Country Championships but was not able to afford the trip and didn’t go.

In the spring of her senior year she lowered the high school record in the 3,000 meters to 9:08.6 (in Kiev, USSR) – a record that lasted for 41 years when Katie Rainsberger broke it.. 

  

Mary Decker

Mary Decker

Orange HS, Orange, CA 1976

Mary Decker (Slaney) ruled U.S. middle distance during the 1980s, but she first gained fame as a running prodigy before she reached high school in California.

“Little Mary Decker” was a club athlete who might have qualified for the 1972 Olympics at age 13, but she was ruled too young. In 1973, at 14, she beat the Soviet silver medalist in the 800 meters at a U.S.-Soviet indoor meet in Minsk.

In 1973 and 1974, she broke world records in the indoor mile (4:40.1) and 800 meters (2:01.8). Those achievements held up as prep records for many years but a cycle of injuries limited her ability to compete through the late 1970s. Her big breakthrough as a pro came in 1983 when she won world titles in the 1,500 and 3,000 meters. 

 

Kathy McMillan

Kathy McMillan

Hoke County HS, Raeford, NC 1976

Kathy McMillan rose to world class level in the women’s long jump as a 17-year-old in 1975. The junior from Hoke County High won her third straight North Carolina title and then smashed the high school record over the summer with a 21-7.25 effort.

As a senior, McMillan focused on making the U.S. Olympic team. In April of 1976 she broke the American record three times, including a leap of 22-1.75. At the AAU Championships she jumped 22-3 for a national prep record that lasted 39 years.

McMillan won the Olympic Trials. In Montreal, she moved from sixth to the silver medal position with a mark of 21-10.25.

McMillan made her second Olympic team in 1980, but was unable to compete because of the U.S. boycott. 

 

Renaldo Nehemiah

Renaldo Nehemiah

Scotch Plains-Fanwood HS, Scotch Plains, NJ 1977

Renaldo Nehemiah was a world-class hurdler in high school. At the Eastern States Championships in 1977, he blazed through the 120-yard hurdles final in a hand-timed 12.9 seconds – the fastest in history.

The switch from yards to meters was happening during this time and his name has been lost atop the all-time rankings for the 110-meter hurdles.

But Nehemiah is the only prep to ever go under 13 seconds – and 110 meters and 120 yards are nearly identical.

“Skeets” Nehemiah was an excellent sprinter but gravitated to the challenge of the hurdles. As a senior he set the national record indoors in the 60-yard hurdles (6.9). He also ran 35.8 outdoors in the 330-yard hurdles. He won the AAU Junior title over 42-inch hurdles and clocked 13.5 seconds for a record that lasted 27 years.

Nehemiah went on to break the world record in 1981 when he ran 12.93. 

 

Chandra CheeseboroughChandra Cheeseborough

Ribault HS, Jacksonville FL, 1977

Chandra Cheeseborough was one of the outstanding female talents that emerged in the mid-1970s as high schools began girls programs. Since college track and field for women was still practically non-existent, prodigious high school talents like McMillan and Cheeseborough had little competition when it came to making U.S. teams.

Cheeseborough broke her first national high school record when she ran 22.77 in the 200 meters at altitude in Mexico City. Her record lasted 17 years. In 1976, in the run-up to the Montreal Olympics, she broke the high school record in the 100 meters by clocking 11.13 seconds.

She made it to the Olympic final in the 100 and finished sixth. In 1977, as a senior, she ran top high school times of 11.56 and 22.89.

Cheeseborough enjoyed a long and productive track career that culminated with the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where she earned silver in the 400 (49.05 American record) and won a pair of gold medals in the 4x100 and 4x400 relays.

 

Michael Carter

Michael Carter

Jefferson HS, Dallas TX, 1979

Michael Carter’s high school boys shot put record of 81 feet, 3.50 inches is a strongman feat that has held up for 39 years and no one has even come close to it. It has been called the most difficult prep record to break and for good reason.

Carter broke the national high school record five times in the spring of 1979 – taking it from 72-3.75 to 77 feet at the Texas state meet. But his final prep throw, at the Golden West Invitational, was off the charts. He not only PR’d by four feet on that last attempt, he went nine feet farther than anyone else ever had at the high school level with the 12-pound ball. He also put the 16-pound shot 67-9, the best mark ever by a prep outdoors.

He went on to win seven NCAA titles at SMU, where he was also a football star. He earned a silver medal at the 1984 Olympic Games and then went into pro football with the San Francisco 49ers, winning three Super Bowls.

He also raised a daughter, Michelle, to become the Olympic champion in the shot put as well as the American record holder. 

 

Kim Gallagher

Upper Dublin HS, Fort Washington, PA, 1982

Kim GallagherA precocious talent with a love of running since elementary school, Kim Gallagher was a high school sensation in the Philadelphia suburbs with range from 800 meters to 5,000.

As a freshman, Gallagher ran 4:49.2 to win the Penn Relays mile. As a sophomore, she advanced to the semifinals of the Olympic Trials 1,500 meters, running 4:25.2. As a junior, she broke her national record when she ran 2:01.82 in the 800 meters. Although she missed much of her senior season with injury, she anchored Upper Dublin’s 4x800 relay to 8:58.43 for another national record. She finished her high school career with 12 Pennsylvania state titles.

In the summer after her graduation, she lowered her 800 record to 2:00.07 – a standard that lasted 31 years. She also ran 4:36.24 for the mile, including a 1,500 record 4:16.6 en route.

Gallagher won Olympic medals in the 800 in 1984 and 1988. She was stricken with stomach cancer in 1995 and died in 2002 at the age of 38. 

 

Alan Webb

Alan Webb

South Lakes HS, Reston, VA 2001

Alan Webb helped to usher in a resurgence of American distance running with his pursuit of the sub-four mile in high school. No prep had done it since 1967.

Webb brought a wave of excitement to his mission and when he pierced the four-minute barrier for the first time, indoors at The Armory, it portended bigger things to come. He electrified the track and field community later, at the Prefontaine Classic, when he raced the best milers in the world and broke Jim Ryun’s unassailable record with 3:53.43.

For high school runners since, Webb established the new benchmark. He went on to compete in the 2004 Olympic Games. He broke the American record in the mile in 2007 with 3:46.91. 

 

Allyson Felix

Allyson Felix

Los Angeles Baptist HS, Los Angeles, CA 2003

Allyson Felix made rapid progress from freshman year to senior year at L.A. Baptist, going from first-time track athlete to national high school record holder.

She made it all the way to the CIF Finals as a freshman, where she took seventh place in the 100 meters.

Felix took off from there. By her junior year in 2002 she was the best sprinter in the country and she was going head to head in national meets with Sanya Richards. As a senior, she twice broke the high school record in the indoor 200 meters, taking it down to 23.14 and making the U.S. team for the World Indoor Championships. Outdoors, she ran high school records of 22.51 at Mt. SAC and 22.11 at altitude in Mexico City for a bronze at the Pan Am Games.

Felix also paved a new way forward, choosing to go to college to pursue a degree but turning professional for athletics. In the nearly 15 years since her high school graduation, Felix has built one of the all-time great careers in track and field and captured nine Olympic medals. 

 

Coaches and Contributors

Joe Newton

Joe Newton, York IL

Joe Newton was widely considered the greatest high school cross country coach in the U.S. over a career that spanned more than 50 years. His York Dukes, the famed “long green line,” won 28 state cross country titles in hyper-competitive Illinois.

Newton could come across gruff, but he instilled work ethic and toughness in his athletes. In 1988, he was the first high school coach to be selected to the staff of the U.S. Olympic track and field team. His distance runners won 20 state titles on the track. His 2004 cross country team, fittingly, won the inaugural Nike Team Nationals.

Mr. Newton passed away last December and his memorial in Elmhurst, Ill. drew hundreds of people to York High in January.

 

Don Norford

Don Norford, Long Beach Poly CA

Don Norford dedicated much of his life to the coaching of athletes at his alma mater, Long Beach Poly. Starting in 1976, he became a teacher and a football coach for the Jackrabbits. He didn’t take the reins of the track program until 1989, but when he did he turned the school into the nation’s top sprinting powerhouse. His teams won 18 CIF state championships by the time he retired in 2014. His boys and girls relays teams set numerous national records and became the standard by which others were measured. He took Poly teams on annual trips to the Penn Relays and waged a competitive, entertaining rivalry with high school teams from Jamaica. His teams won 13 Championship of America wheels in Philadelphia.

 

John Dye

John Dye, DyeStat.com

John Dye got involved in track and field to chart the progress of his two teenage kids, who were competing on high school teams in Maryland in the late 1990s. With a working knowledge of something new – the internet and building web sites – Dye sought to produce and display national rankings. But after he satisfied his own curiosity about where his son and daughter fell on the Top 100, he kept going. His innovation, DyeStat.com, turned the provincial sport of high school track and field into a national sport where teens could learn about their athletic peers across state lines. In some ways, DyeStat was one of the earliest examples of a social network, with stats and stories and message boards that gave the track and field community a gathering place. 

 

Ed GrantEd Grant, Journalist

Ed Grant has been a fixture at the Millrose Games and Penn Relays for seven decades, nearly all of it as a chronicler of the sport. He edited the New Jersey Track newsletter and worked at the Newark Star-Ledger for 19 years. Grant is still active in track and field at 91.

Fortunately, he's going to be able to be at the induction ceremony. 

 



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