USC TRACK & FIELD Times and marks for USC Track Athletes 1894 to 2018 INTRODUCTION This supplement booklet to the media guide is my effort to document every athlete who competed for the University of Southern California Track Team. Needless to say, I know everyone is not listed, but I did try. This booklet is a free download, but if you really like what you see here, I/we (Trojan Force) would be more than happy to accept any donation you’d like to send. That info will be at the end of this introduction. WHERE TO START? I wrestled with how to organize all this data knowing that the next person would have chosen a different format. But here it is, such as it is. With a men AND a women’s program we’re looking at some 6,000+ names who can be accounted for that competed for USC. This number doesn’t take into account all the relays as there are names on some of the relay teams that did not show up in any other results that I was able to find. Every effort was made to find a mark or time for every track athlete, but this just wasn’t possible. Athletes listed with no marks or times were the 2nd and 3rd place finishers in posted meet results. This booklet covers the years 1894 to 2018 for the men; the women’s supplement is still being “written” and I hope to have it done by the end of summer 2018. The early marks were gathered from posted results in the newspaper and the El Rodeo yearbook. The T&F archives in Heritage Hall and older media guides were also a great benefit. The narratives for each event are my perspectives to provide a little background information or history. These are intended as consumer pieces, not academic pieces so my reflections could miss some information or be wrong about other points. The NCAA Meet is also a reference point when talking about our athletes here. The Olympic Games will also be referenced. INTRODUCTION I decided to add photos for each event and this might have taken me hours and hours to sort out. I mean really, who do you leave out??? So I chose the path of least resistance and used the photos I could access the easiest. No slight was intended by the exclusion of any of our track athletes. QUICK NOTE ON SOURCES I just love the digital age. Without it I don’t know if I would have been able to do a quarter of this research. So much was online that I didn’t have to do a lot of traveling. One does tend to go a little buggy after looking through 80-some-odd years of newspaper clippings. MARKS AND TIMES My apologies if this is a little redundant, but times listed to tenths (i.e. 9.7; 22.3; 4:21.5; etc.) commonly means that the times are hand-timed. Times listed to hundredths are typically electronic times. Times can be converted from hand to electric, but I decided to stay away from doing that and have listed those converted times that were already published in past media guides. Also, no wind-aided times and marks are included in these lists. This can be a real crap-shoot for some of these early dual meets because who knows if the wind was blowing or not. There are a few converted distances in the shot put that I normally wouldn’t do, but did so to include the athletes with a mark as opposed to not having any mark. All marks posted are by athletes while enrolled at USC. No pre- or post-USC marks have been used to the best of my knowledge. INTRODUCTION CHANGES IN T&F HISTORY The track & field environment hasn’t stayed static over the decades as equipment and training has improved vastly. Here’s a brief run-down: - Improved performances over the last 100+ years are because of the new synthetic tracks (remember, it used to be dirt, cinder or even crushed brick tracks); - Concrete throwing circles (I can’t even imagine throwing from a dirt circle); - Synthetic runways; - Safer and softer landing pits for the vertical jumps. Can you imagine vaulting 18ft to land in a sawdust pit? Or even a SAND pit?? - The idea of starting blocks was also a new idea. If you’ve seen the movie “Chariots of Fire” you’ll recall the sprinters had small trowels that they used to dig out holes for their feet to start a race. - Hurdles have been referred to as barricades in today’s vernacular, but back in the day these things were actual barriers that you didn’t want to hit. They were made out of wood and heavy. - Pole vault poles have especially come a long way from the days of wood and bamboo poles - Training. Training now for track & field has become highly specialized and is no longer a “this-is-the-way-I-did-it” sport. To coach T&F athletes these days one has to attend clinics or courses in techniques and training. It helps if you were a former athlete, but that isn’t necessarily a requirement. Imagine a Fred Kelly or a Charley Paddock, et. al. benefitting from today’s advances in T&F? THE COACHES Not a bad group for the past 110 years INTRODUCTION SOME THANK YOU’S I did have some help and support in all this and I appreciate their input and backing. - Dave Tuttle at SID gave me access to the track archives in Heritage Hall. It was a little surreal to realize that many of the files I was leafing through were created by Dean Cromwell, Jess Mortensen, and Vern Wolfe. - Larry Knuth, former USC coach for giving me several media guides from the 50s and 60s. These were great for adding names and marks to the lists. - Coach Caryl Smith Gilbert, current Director of the USC Track program. She has always given me positive feedback and support. She has been great! - Ron Allice, for green-lighting this whole digital quest to get USC T&F out there on the web back in the late 90s. Bill Tisdale got this off the ground back then. - Sam Nicholson, Sam has become my (everyone’s) go-to person when needing information on some of our past athletes. I’ve bothered Sam many a time with those questions. Sam gets authorship credit as well for he contributed to every event in this supplement. - LA84 Library, thank you ’84 Olympics for using that extra cash to create this place. The people there are great and were very helpful in finding a lot of this past information. I think (hope) that’s everyone. TROJAN FORCE This supplement is an extension of the Trojan Force, the booster group for the USC Track program. It’s a labor of love, but we ain’t too proud to accept any donation if you feel so moved. You can send that to: Trojan Force PO Box 431995 Los Angeles, CA. 90043 You can contact me at: [email protected] Russ Reabold Sam Nicholson The Sprints THE 100 / 200 Before professional sports stole the limelight, track and field was ‘king’ and USC was the reigning monarchy. USC was Sprinter U. before it became Tailback U. with Howard Drew leading the way by setting World Records (WR) in the 100 and 220 in 1914. USC sprinters over the following 30 years would claim another 9 WRs in the 100y. A sample progression: Time Name Year 9.6 Howard Drew 1914 9.6 Charley Paddock 1921 9.5 Charley Borah 1926 9.4 Frank Wykoff 1930 9.3 Mel Patton 1948 The 100m proved a steeper hill to climb for USC sprinters as Charley Paddock set a School Record (SR) of 10.2 in 1923 and no one would surpass that mark until 1975!! (James Gilkes) SPRINTING TID-BITS Howard Drew was the first athlete to be called the “Worlds Fastest Human” and was labeled by sports writers as “the first of the great black sprinters.” USC’s “Worlds Fastest Humans” only started with Howard as Charley Paddock and Mel Patton would also be crowned “Worlds Fastest.” Both set world records for 100m & 200m (Charley in 1921; Mel in 1949) and both are Olympic champions (Charley at the 1920 Games; Mel in the 1948 Games). At the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Paddock received much attention in the press by jumping across the finish line. He continued to jump in a few races after the Olympics to please his fans, but stopped doing it because he felt it slowed him down. THE 100 / 200 A NOTE ON TIMING Times that appear in tenths (9.9; 21.3; 4:02.1; etc) represent hand-timed results. Times appearing in hundredths (9.92; 20.12; 1:43.48; etc) represent electronic-timed races. To the best of my research on this, the ’72 Olympics were the first games to use electronic timing in T&F (for the NCAA Championships, it’s 1975). Photo-finish cameras however have been in use since at least the ’36 Olympics. THE 200 What has been fascinating in researching USC T&F is to see track and field evolve through the years. The 220 is one such race as it used to be run as a straight race. That’s one long straightaway. The straight 220 races were run almost always in the United States, because the USA was the only country that had 220y straightaways at both the high schools and colleges.