National High School Records Through the Years

Girls Outdoor Record – Discus

Nancy Norberg (Cubberley High School, Palo Alto, California)

Performance – 146 feet, 2 ½ inches

Date – August 31, 1963

Place – Palo Alto, California

Meet – AAU Pacific Association all-comers meet

Previous Record – 145-10 ½ by Carol Jean Moseke (Cedar Rapids, Nebraska) May 11, 1963 in Dix, Nebraska

This was the first of four national high school records Norberg set in the girls’ discus, 62 years ago this week. As a 16-year-old in the summer of 1963, Norberg had won the AAU Juniors championship, in Dayton, Ohio, throwing 139-0. That spring she had thrown 144-7 at an all-comers meet in Sacramento, narrowly missing the girls’ national record that had been set just one week earlier in Nebraska, of 145-10 ½. (She threw at AAU Meets because girls were not allowed to represent their school yet in California.) A year later in 1964, now 17, she broke her own record three times, finishing up her high school career with a best of 149-6. Norberg came from an athletic family. Her father, Hank Norberg, had been Peninsula Athletic League champion in the discus for Palo Alto High School, in 1937, and later starred in football at Stanford and for the San Francisco 49ers. Norberg Sr. later became the track coach at Cubberley High School, coaching both his daughter and her younger brother, Hank Jr. 

National High School Records Through the Years appears once a week, compiled and written by a track historian, Jack Pfeifer (Lake Oswego, Oregon). Inquiries may be directed to him by email (jack.pfeifer@gmail.com).     

READ THE FULL SERIES OF FOR THE RECORD