I've got a lot of catching up to do and can never get ahead. This morning was the NCAA XC championships in Charlottsville, VA and Parker Valby of U. of Florida won the women's race by 10 seconds. I don't know if we can say she won it easily, but she certainly smoked the field. NC State continued their team dominance the last three years edging Northern Arizona 123-124 And another great win in the men's race by an Ivy Leaguer Graham Blanks of Harvard. Oklahoma State won the men's team title over Northern AZ 49-71 But those are the big news things and this blog tends to cover the things that are not so big, or maybe once were big and are now all but forgotten.
More detailed info can be found at Men's results and Women's Results
Today I also received a nice email from my friend John Cobley in Sydney, British Columbia. John wrote the blog, racingpast.ca which is without doubt the best ever on distance and middle distance running history. He currently writes another blog Coppice-gate which centers on jazz and poetry. He translates Russian poetry as a hobby. John ran at BYU when Lasse Viren spent a semester there. Today John sent a Wikipedia link to movies and documentaries that include track and field in their plots. They go back to the silent days of Buster Keaton up to modern times. Many of the films I clearly remember having seen, others are on the edge of obscurity. At least two are not mentioned in the list. One is Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier; the other is The Human Comedy with Mickey Rooney. Hoffman, a dubious looking runner at best in the film, ( I edited the term 'piss poor') is pursued by the villain played by Laurence Olivier. He had to be bad if 60 years old Olivier caught him. Olivier drills one of Hoffman's teeth (without Novacaine) to get Hoffman to give up some information. But Hoffman resists, perhaps because he knows how to deal with pain due to his running. Oh well, enough said.
In The Human Comedy Mickey Rooney stars as a high schooler who happens to run the low hurdles in a scene. That's the only reference to track and field in the film. That to me makes it a track movie. Interestingly William Saroyan was hired as the screen writer of this film but was fired or relieved of his duties. In response, Saroyan then wrote a novel by that title and published it before the film came out. Sounds like a big payday for the lawyers. The Human Comedy, the track meet 38 minutes If you go to about the 38 minute mark Rooney is getting in trouble in the classroom and he and his rival are being kept in during the track meet. They eventually get out of it and a lesson is learned.
Here is the link to that film list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_about_the_sport_of_athletics
If you can think of other films not on this list that have a reference to our sport, please let us know. Many on this list you can connect directly to and view. I recommend the first one on the list College link
starring Buster Keaton. It is silent, and it displays Keaton's athletic talent near the end. If you open the film, go to 30:39 where a scene is filmed in the new Los Angeles Coliseum where a track team is seen working out and Keaton tries unsuccessfully to be part of it. Then late in the film he uses his newly learned talents to rescue a damsel in distress at (1hr 1 min.). His pole vault through a second floor window is quite good, even if he used a double. The damsel is being held hostage by her suitor, which in today's world would have necessitated a Swat Team to save the day. In the scene just prior to the one in the L.A. Coliseum Keaton plays in blackface which is totally non PC these days, but in this film the African Americans extract revenge.
Dr. John Telford sent us some old photos of his competition days in the 1950's when he was one of the outstanding quarter milers in the world while running for Wayne State University. "Wayne State Track and Field?" you say. Yes Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. They had an outstanding team in those days and Dr. Telford is part of an organization campaigning to revive the sport to its former glory at that institution. WSU track was a victim of cutbacks even before the onslaught of scholarship and team reductions of the past 20 years. A friend described the process and compared it to the Monty Python skit about the Black Knight who keeps getting limbs cut off in a sword fight and describes them as 'flesh wounds' until he is left armless and legless.
The same friend, Bill Schnier, former U. of Cincinnati head coach also described something about John Telford's book on running.
"In his book John Telford addressed his plan for running 400 meters, probably the best plan I have ever heard. He divided the race into four separate 100s. The first hundred on the curve, he went out hard and worked on making up the stagger. On the second hundred, the backstretch, which began once the curve hit the straight, he spoke about relaxing and maintaining his speed at a steady state. The third hundred or the second curve, he went back to work and put himself into position for the finish. On the final straightaway, he continued to work but spent more effort on technique and relaxing. This relaxing is not to be confused with taking it easy but instead not fighting oneself. By giving himself specific tasks at four separate places in the race, he combined physical effort with thinking, getting the most out of himself."
Anyway, here are some of those photos that Dr. Telford has sent to us.
Teammates Ralph Carter and John Telford taking first and second in the 1957 PAC championship meet hosted by WSU at old Redford High School
Again, let me urge you to restore men's track at WSU. - Dr. John Telford
And finally: Browsing through a second hand store this week on Senior discount day (-30%) I found a not so recent book (1992) Bear Down, The University of Arizona Intercollegiate Sports- A Photographic Chronicle by Janet Mitchell. In it the following photograph got my attention.
Ina Giddings U. of Nebraska
Holy guacamole, a lady going over her height in the pole vault while wearing bloomers? Who was Ina Giddings? Well the pic says she went to Nebraska, but she went on from Lincoln to Tuscon where she was the first woman to direct the women's athletics program at the U. of Arizona. She led that movement for 31 years and had women's sports going in the early 1920's. One of their earliest events was a shooting competition in which the women defeated the university's men's team in 1924. Those guys would not have survived the O.K. Corral shoot out in Tombstone. The next year the women's baseball team played their first off campus game with Tempe Normal. In those days 'Normal' colleges were there to develop teachers. Ball State in Muncie, Indiana was originally East Middle Indiana Normal College. Another effort by Ina Giddings was to convince the university to convert its garden to a sports field for women.
Here are some more pics from the book:
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