V 14 N. 7 A Second Tribute to Tom Coyne 1933- 2024 by His Teammate Paul O'Shea

 

Fifteen finishers from the October 29, 1950 Waukegan, Illinois five-miler.  Coyne is kneeling, furthest left, with the race winner Bobby Allen in the center.  Coyne was second in the race.  O’Shea is shown in the center with a number 44 jersey. Allen ran for Marquette University and won a number of Central Collegiate titles.

                               He Was My Friend from Starting Line to Podium

                                                        By Paul O’Shea

For seventy-five years, I knew Tom Coyne as a leader, competitor, teammate. And finally, as my

editor who put things to right on dozens of articles I wrote about the sport we both loved.

Our journey began in l949 when I was thirteen, living in a western suburb, traveling downtown

to attend Chicago’s St. Ignatius High School.

Like innocents with little football experience but a South Bend field of dreams, I thought I could

enhance the Ignatius freshman team. On Day Two the wide receiver coach relieved me of ever

having to Play Like a Champion Today.

Unsure of what to do next, I sat at the edge of the practice field with the answer right in front

of me. The dozen runners relentlessly circling the field in the late summer heat weren’t football

rejects. They were Chicago’s premier high school cross country team.

Like the proverbial caboose, I hooked on and found my niche. One of the leaders was Tom

Coyne, with a powerful stride, a stern expression, focused as if taking a Jesuit final exam. In

fact, I was the one who would open the bluebook and pass the course.

I spent two years at St. Ignatius and watched Tom and fellow co-captain Ray Mayer win dozens

of city and conference races, on grass and the track. I had modest success (I was Catholic City

champion at 880 yards as a sophomore) before transferring to a public high school near my

suburban home.

In the Nineteen Fifties Tom and I would seek off-label races which didn’t involve the St. Ignatius

Wolfpack. My scrapbook carries crumbling clippings from a dozen or so races we contested. I

ran in two national championship 15 kilometer races on the roads of Washington Park. A year

later, possibly envious of all the fun I had in l950 when I finished eleventh, Tom entered and

finished sixth while I was thirteenth.

Especially memorable were Thanksgiving weekend contests staged in typical Midwestern

winter conditions. Not one but two five thousand meter cross country races were offered at

Chicago’s Waveland Golf Course, just a few icicles from Lake Michigan. The Central AAU meet

was held on the holiday followed by the CYO meet two days later. We ran through crusty sand

traps, over frozen putting greens, into the unrelenting wind and back to the starting line for the

finish.

Meet results from the ‘50 race confirmed the conditions: “snowed hard, 25 mile wind, 25

degrees.” Two days later: “Light snow, 22 mile wind, temperature 13 degrees.” No amount of

analgesic balm could cope.

When I came home my Czech born and raised mother rewarded me with drumsticks, dumplings

and strudel.

For most diehard distance runners there are no off seasons.

During the winter, when not running in the halls of our Roosevelt Road school, we trained at

the Chicago Avenue Armory, with its unusual olfactory challenges. The site of indoor

professional polo, adding to our routine breathing burdens were the smells of the horses

housed in stables underneath the facility.

Outdoors, Tom and I would see each other at University of Chicago Track Club open meets at

Chicago’s Stagg Field and Rockne Stadium and occasionally compete in the same race. I earned

only moral victories. One rare out of town contest was a five-mile road race held in Waukegan,

Illinois. Fifteen or so starters strung out across a city street. Coyne was second, O’Shea fourth.

No automobiles were disadvantaged by the mobile intruders.

In the Mid Sixties Tom and I discovered a seldom offered event, the Two-Man Ten-Mile Relay. A

team of two was asked to complete forty circuits of Stagg Field’s En-Tout-Cas track, with no

restrictions on how the task should be apportioned. Showing a courtesy instilled by the Jesuits,

we determined that each would run twenty alternate quarters.

Round and round the Coyne-O’Shea entry proceeded, but late in the enterprise aerobic

burdens added up, and Coyne was forced to assume more of the chore as O’Shea required

more time to complete his assignment. Faster teams whisked by, finishing ahead of us, amused

by the chaps still circling, while they recovered on the infield.

Tom and I lost touch until we reconnected decades later, after he had seen something I had

written. Then, I asked him if he would check copy I was producing for a newsletter, and the last

years of our friendship began.

Over two decades Tom reviewed some forty pieces I wrote about my reporting on international

track meets, years as a high school cross country coach, and books about our sport. His scrutiny

and advice were invaluable, reflecting his own deep skills as a writer.

The last time I saw Tom was about ten years ago when he came East to a high school meet at

Georgetown Prep in Bethesda, Maryland. Tom’s athletic partner sixty years earlier had a

mission to open St. Ignatius athletes to wider athletic opportunities while also giving them new

educational vistas. That year Ray Mayer funded the entire trip for the St. Ignatius track team,

twenty-one runners, jumpers, and throwers. Tom and I joined in the project, and I wrote about

it for this blog (link)  Vol 3 N. 62 St. Ignatius Prep Gets Ignited by a Former Runner

Thomas Coyne died January 14 at age ninety.

He deserves our sport’s highest accolade: world class.

January 2024

Below is a clipping from the Chicago Sun Times with results of that city's scholastic cross country championships.  They had a public and private school division.  I'm sure the coaches did a postal type competition to see who would have won out if both divisions ran together.  Ed.  

                                                                          1951

St. Ignatius was the class act in this meet.  It appears this meet went beyond the Chicago limits with Culver Military coming over from Indiana for the race.