Recently I received a note from Russ Reabold who creates the website Trojan Force for the U. of Southern California track team. You can find it way down below right on this page under a heading Our Favorite Running Sites (Quick link, it's hard to find) I did a quick review of Trojan Force and noticed that they have a section that has historical results of a number of conferences' outdoor and indoor meets. For fun I turned to my senior year (1965) and the Big Eight Conference. Of course the Big Eight evolved over the years to the Big Twelve and now I don't know what, and don't much care, because my alma mater Oklahoma is now in the SEC and USC is in the Big Ten along with The University of Beijing for all I know.
I opened that outdoor result held at the University of Nebraska which is now in the Big Ten or is it Twelve? Why did they ever change it from the Western Conference when the University of Chicago played with the big schools? Anyway my old eyes were drawn to the Triple Jump aka Hop Step and Jump in those days and noticed that Tom Von Ruden, one of Oklahoma State's all time great milers placed sixth in the TJ and got a point for the Cowpokes in the conference meet. He had already gotten a second place in the mile that year. Why in the name of God's Green Apples was Von Ruden risking limb if not life in that event? Then I remembered that once upon a time it was not uncommon to be asked to take one for the team in those conference and especially those dual and triangular meets.
Tom Von Ruden
Big Eight Outdoors 1965
Von Ruden ran a 4:07 in this race
His Triple Jump was 46' 2 1/4"
George,
Not only could Tom triple jump, he could triple and quadruple in running events in track meets. He ran 3 880’s and a leg on the mile relay on Friday and Saturday in the 1965 NCAA Indoor meet. It was held in Detroit on Cobo Hall’s 11 lap track.
On Friday he ran prelims in the 880 and then won the 880 Championship race later on Friday. On Saturday, he ran third leg of the two mile relay in 1:50.0. OSU won that with a 7:27.9 over Villanova. Then Tom ran a sub 50.0 leg on the mile relay that got 4th place.
OSU missed winning the NCAA Team Championship by 1 1/2 points.
Next, we went to Milwaukee and won the USTFF/Milwaukee Journal Games with a 7:31.7 two mile relay and a decisive 30 yard win over Ohio University. That time broke both the USTFF and Milwaukee Stadium records by a lot! Tom ran right at 1:51.0 on third leg. (Milwaukee track was one of those “slow” 11 lap tracks but not as slow as Lubbock.
I’ve attached a photo of Cobo Hall and the crowd. Those were also the days when spectators went to track meets.
John Perry
The caption reads : "Runners Swoop (I thought it said 'sweep' ed.) Down the Track in the 1,000 -Yard Run at NCAA \i Indoor Track Championships at Cobo Arena as a Crowd of 8400 Watches Action"
I once was asked to triple in the three mile after having run the mile and 880 in a dual meet at Arizona. It was a close meet and it was rare that we had a chance against those warm weather teams in our first outdoor meet of the year. By the seventh or eighth lap, I was about to be over taken and dropped out ending my race and crawled back into the stands with my tail between my legs. Fortunately for me our 880 guy Walter Mizell managed to hold off a very good anchorman for Arizona Dave Murray in the mile relay that night and we won the meet. Mizell was not a quarter miler, but he stood up to the challenge giving up 17 and 15/16ths yards of an 18 yard lead but held on to win the relay and as a consequence also the meet.
Want to hear the real story about this photo above. Read this from the guy on the inside lane, Walt Mizell.
George, following up on your thoughts about tracksters multi-tasking in meets, here’s the rest of the story about the mile relay at Arizona U.
OU was ahead by 5 points with two events still in play; the triple jump and the mile relay. I had just completed the 880 yard race (still a bit tired), and learned that if OU could get just one point in the triple jump, we would win the meet no matter the outcome in the relay.
I had triple-jumped in a few dual meets before this meet and surprisingly had won a few points doing it. So I made a late entry into that event, did a few run-throughs to get the take-off point set up, and did a couple of actual jumps for record. But I was about two feet out of third place, and weighed the chances of moving up into third place and getting the point we needed against what it would take out of me in the relay. If it had just been a few inches, I would have stayed with the TJ, but two feet was too much (and above my PR in that event.) So I abandoned the plan to try to score a point in the jump, and tried to rest up a bit for the coming relay.
The newspaper described it accurately. OU’s first three runners gave me a lead of about 18 yards. But everybody in the stadium knew Dave Murray would be coming after me. He caught me in the middle of the second turn and tried to just smooth on by. But I had decided that no matter where he tried to go around I was not going to let him go by. From there on until the finish (I’m estimating it was the last 160 yards or so) he tried repeatedly to come around; first in the curve, then on the straightaway. He ran a great race—much faster time than I had—but he never, ever, at any point got the lead.
Your description of the winning distance as being about an inch isn’t much of an exaggeration.
I have heard that Dave Murray is no longer with us, and if that is true I am confident that he remembered that race until his final day. I know I
will . . .it was the essence of sport.
Your old teammate,
Walt
Thanks, Walt, for this 'in house' account. This was when the whole team travelled together to the same meet and didn't scatter around the country trying to get a qualifying time to get into the NCAA championships. After that Arizona dual meet victory we were rewarded with getting three new convertibles from a rental agency in Tucson and driving down to Nogales, Mexico. This was on the Oklahoma university tab. A number of my teammates came back from that adventure needing penicillin to 'cure a runny nose'* as our erudite coach put it into words at the next team meeting.
Thinking back on those days and the way college track meets were conducted, I sent out a note to a few of my old teammates:
l"Talk about the good old days when the coach would come up and say, I know you just ran the mile and doubled back in the 880 but I think you might get us a point in the shot. Get in there. Feel free to forward this to any of the old guys."
"Yep or draft a football player for one meet if you thought he could get one point!"
Ed. note: J.D. once held the unofficial WR in PV , then went on to win the Pan Am Games decathlon in 1963.
By 1965 he was named the Oklahoma U. head coach after an elbow injury ruined his chances at making the next Olympic team in 1964. He remained in that job for over thirty years.
"
Joe Don Looney? I think he drafted himself to get out of Spring football.
Never a problem for you, J.D. . You could do every event. They should have had hurdles while juggling steak knives for you."
Ed. Joe Don Looney was an All-American football player in 1963 or was it '64. Also was an early proponent of weight training. Could squat 600 pounds. Billy Cannon at LSU was another of that ilk.
"Ha. The Norman Transcript actually took a picture of me going over a hurdle carrying a shot in throwing position with one hand and a javelin in the other." J.D.
" Now I have something to do in my old age. I'm gonna look for it on
newspapers.com " GB
Well, here's what I found after that search. Not quite the way J.D. remembered it, but almost...... He has a shot and a discus in each hand while going over a low hurdle.
We'd be interested to hear your experiences with doing the odd job during a track meet.
Getting points for the team was fun but also enabled such an athlete to appreciate the sport even more. In my early years at UC we had a meet at Marshall and the Thundering Herd was on their way to victory. Lewis Johnson (Lewis is current NBC post race announcer) was upset over his 400 race and asked if he could enter the triple jump. He did so without any training whatsoever, jumped 44' 11", placed second, and scored what was to be the deciding points. He served as a model for that type of selflessness for years to come. Bill Schnier U. of Cincinnati coach ret'd.
Hey, George--All this made me think of one time at a track meet eons ago somewhere or other east of the Mississippi where there were only two entered in the javelin, and the meet director was going around asking if anyone would throw so he didn't have to cancel the event, needing three people . I volunteered since, after all, years earlier, in my 15 yr. old track beginnings, I had gone back in the woods, cut down a length of sapling, nailed on a point fashioned from a tin can and pretended I knew how to throw in my backyard, filled with invisible cheering thousands.
So I weighed 115 pounds. So what? The primitive beauty of the javelin had always appealed to me. What the heck, I had already run my 800 and had nothing else to do. Somewhere in my volumes of workouts and race results there's a distance listed, and somewhere in a shoebox there's a third place javelin medal.
George, I love "Once Upon a Time...." and you for doing it. Still on my list of Things to Do is to find the clipping from that snowy BSU race. Any time now...
Cheers, Grace Butcher
Reminds me of 1 time I volunteered to run the 2 mile for team points after running the mile and 880 (yeah, yds back in my day)
I had run 1 two mile in the fall as a work out and mainly to break my Dad's school 2 mile record that had lasted from 1933 to sometime late in the 1950s. 9:31+. I ran even paced 9:18 and figured that was my one and only 2 mile. Fast forward to the spring track season and we were in a close meet with another college/university. I talked my coach into letting me run the 2 mile and since it was a home meet there wasn't any problem in getting me into the race.
I ran with our best 2 miler and we were in a pack of 4, 3 from my team and only 1 from the other team. After 6 and a half laps I started to feel it and decided that the other two guys could handle the 1 opponent and bailed out at the 220 starting line, thus the half lap. I can't recall how the race finished as I was nabbed and told that I was going to finish the meet with the 2nd leg on the mile relay! We won the relay and I barely broke 49 with the usual running start. I never volunteered to run a race again for Coach Jordan. Anonymous Stanford runner
I remember these days In my own track experience I was a "point getter" Those were the days where it was important to win the dual meet. League title Mike Waters
Or stacking the hurdles and putting away the pits. Russ Reabold
George-the responses to your post are really fun to read. Personally, I always had great admiration for those great runners of my generation who could double and triple on a single day's competition. My strength as a runner was the ability to run "live or die" races that took everything I had, leaving nothing in the tank for a second event, with the exception of a leg on a mile relay. Finally, I grew strong enough at Long Beach State to run a couple of races on race day, including a 1962 Mt. SAC double at the mile (4:19.8) and 880 (1:52.8) while anchoring the DMR and SMR. I returned the following day and lowered the school record in the 880 from 1:53.6 to 1:51.4 while placing 5th. Then in 1966 at Modesto I doubled in 4:07.9 while anchoring the DMR to 4th and returned an hour later to anchor the SMR in 1:53.5 . I was 25 years old by then, married with a wife and two boys at home and in my second year of a 38 year career as a high school English teacher and a 46 year career as the distance coach at the same high school for my entire career. The next year, 1967 I set my final two PRs (personal bests), running 3:00.4 for a 1320 in a work-out with the 49er Track Club at USC and a 1:51.2 contribution to our club's world record 2-Mile Relay indoor at Albuquerque, teaming with Harry McCalla, Tom Von Ruden and Preston Davis for a 7:25.2 record. Those two doubles were exceptional for me as each race took so much out of me that I was a long time recovering from the effort. How I admired and looked up to those greats who could run heats, simi-finals and finals while running faster and faster each time they stepped on the track.
Thanks for a wonderful addition to your great contribution to us old folks who love to look back to the "Good Old Days"!
Darryl Taylor
* Neither Walt Mizell or J.D. Martin or the author were one of the Sooners who got a 'runny nose in Nogales'
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