THE NEWSLETTER OF CORNELL TRACK AND CROSS COUNTRY Vol. 63 No. 2 WINTER & SPRING 1979 ALL-AMERICAN ANDY FISCHER '79 LEADING PENN IN THE DUAL MEET STEEPLECHASE (Photo by Tim McKinney '8l) L DEDICATION We of the Spiked Shoe Society of Cornell University dedicate this issue of the WASTEBASKET to GEORGE E. HEEKIN '29 A "Champion" supporter of the Cornell track program, George came from Cincinnati, Ohio where he graduated from Withrow High School. He earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Cornell in 1929* At Cornell, George was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, Sphinx Head. Honorary Society, and the Spiked Shoe Society. He was a member of the Freshman Track Team, and won his "C" as a sprinter on the Varsity Track Team for three years. George headed the Heekin Can Company, which later merged with the Continental Can Company, before his retirement. We thank our "Teammate" George E. Heekin for his continued support of Cornell Track. INDOORS 1979 Highlights of the 1979 indoor season were Steve Baginski's repeated breaking of Al Hall's 23-year-old weight throw record of 63-3^ with a 6k-6 at West Point and then 6U-7ij at the Princeton Relays; Adley Raboy's bettering of the Cornell 60 record which he held jointly with George Ekstrom, Charles Blaugrund, Walter Jones and Vin Redden at :06.2 (hand timed) with his fully automatic time of :06.36 (this is better than :06.2 hand timed because hand times are recognized internationally as being :00.2*1 faster than automatic times, so the :06.36 equates to :06.12); Tony Green's championship in the Heps 1+00; Andy Fischer's championship in the Heps 3000 meters, and Raboy's earning All-East honors off his third place finish in the ICUA champion- ships. Dual wins were registered over Yale, 9^-33; Syracuse-Colgate, 99-53-7, while a hard fought battle at West Point saw the Red go down, 77-59- Sickness and injuries to key personnel took a big toll throughout the season. OUTDOORS 1979 The trip to Palo Alto, Calif., was most rewarding as we placed fifth in a field of 17 teams. The scoring was as follows: 1. San Jose St. 63i 8. Hayward St. 17 15. Stanislaus St. 2 2. California 61 9- Oregon St. Ik 16. Nevada-Reno 1 3. Stanford 1+8 10. Sacramento St. 10| Humboldt St. 0 k. Cal Poly-SLO kO 11. UtaJi 6 Montana 0 5. CORNELL 3li 12. UC-Davis k UC-Bakersfield 0 6. Idaho 23 13. Chico St. 3 7. Idaho St. 18| ll*. Fresno St. 2 The people at Stanford were just great to us as they gave us the keys to the stadium and track facilities so that we could work out whenever we wished. They even loaned us warm-up suits for the meet since we lost a great deal of gear when one of our vans was burgularized in a San Francisco parking garage. Dual meetwise, the Red topped Colgate, 152-20, and ended Penn's dual meet string at 56 straight outdoor meets, dating back to the Quaker's loss to Cornell in 1968! We would have gladly given them the dual in exchange for the Heps championship as we did in 1978! The Penn meet was a great one with excellent performances by both teams. New Cornell outdoor records were set by Carl Francis, who bettered Raboy's 100 meters record by :00.01. Carl ran a fully automatic :10.43, which is :00.01 better than Adley's hand timed :10.2. Andy Fischer lowered his own steeplechase record from 8:59«^, se"t in 1978, to a fine 8:57.^ at Colgate and then brought that down to 8:52.6 in the IC*4-A meet. Dan Predmore ran in the 5000 meters at the IC^A meet, which is better than Ray DeMarco's listed three-mile record of 13:^-8. (NOTE: Since we are now changing over to the metric system, metric records will be posted only if and when they better the existing Imperial record. Hence, until all of the old records are bettered, sane will be in metric, such as the 100 and 200, while others will be Imperial, such as the UUo, 880, etc.) Topping the season off at the TFA/USA meet in Wichita, Kan., Fischer and Baginski were named All-Americans by the TFA/USA off their performances in that meet. OUTLOOK FOR 1980 We will surely miss the great run of horizontal jumping that we have enjoyed due to the loss of Greg Witherspoon, Ken Boddie and Ken Talton. Talton also was our top discus thrower in 1979 as well as a fine decathlon man. We lose Andy Fischer, who was just coming into his own in 1979• Peter Pfitzinger, although felled by sickness in 1979> was still a fine leader. Bob Young, who sparked our first indoor Heps win in 19 years in 1977? has also graduated. The loss of two of the most consistent and reliable men that we have ever had, Tony Green and Jimmy Lofton, will also be felt greatly in 1980. We will have a good group returning, however, so we should continue to do well even though we did not have an especially good year recruiting. NEW MANAGER NEEDED Another great loss due to graduation was our manager of three years, Mike Littlejohn, who served us so well. Mike not only did a fine job, he was also a good friend. A good manager is of vital importance to a team, and Mike made big contributions to our recent successes in both track and cross country. We wish him well. 1980 SPRING TRIP Plans for the 1980 spring trip are well -underway. We will be going to Louisiana (Baton Rouge) for a meet with L.S.U., Minnesota and one other team on March 22nd. Plans are to fly down on about the 20th and return on the 23rd. We also plan to take in one other meet in the South during the early spring. We would have a rather long lay-off between the meet at L.S.U. and the Colgate meet on April 12th (three weeks to be exact) and that would not be good, so we will split our "spring trip" up in 1980 and actually make two trips but both only for the weekends. PLANS FOR A MAJOR INDOOR DUAL MEET Negotiations are currently going on to schedule a dual meet in Ithaca on February 2, 1980 with Stanford University. If Stanford cannot come, we will invite L.S.U. We feel that such a meet would do much for Cornell track and Upstate New York track. We would make a major promotional effort to attract a good crowd. First negotiations have been with Stanford so they have first choice. If they cannot accept, then L.S.U. has indicated a definite interest. INDOOR HEPS WILL RETURN TO ITHACA After a year's absence, the indoor Heps championship meet will return to Barton Hall next February 23rd. The 1978 Heps at Cornell had a net gain of over $700 (after meet expenses), while the 1979 version at Dartmouth showed a net loss in excess of $6300! The 1981 Heps are scheduled for Princeton. After that, it supposedly will rotate around...if we can continue to stand huge financial losses. 1979 CROSS COUNTRY OUTLOOK The 1979 cross country season should be a good one and hopefully end on the plus side. We are being very guarded in our optimism because of the disaster that struck last year's squad with sickness and injuries. We will have a good group of young distance runners back for another go at it, and if they can remain healthy, it could be a very rewarding season. Harvard returns to our schedule, and will be in Ithaca on Friday, October 12th. This will replace the meet with St. John's, Columbia, Seton Hall, Iona, Lafayette and Rochester, which had been a good one for us. We will miss Pfitzinger and Fischer, but will have good leadership from tri-captains Bart Petracca, Dan Predmore and Mike Wyckoff. THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO HELP US IN SO MANY WAYS We wish to express our sincere "thanks" to those of you who have done so much to help us keep Cornell track and cross country alive and well. Many of you are real "champions" in our book, and we feel that you are as much a part of this team as those of us who are here on campus and actually doing the competing. Believe us, without you we would really be hurting. We have not had any budget cuts recently, but that "inflation monster" sure has made its toll felt as our costs continue to rise while the budget does not. So far, we have been able to resist any necessity to cut any part of our program by reducing the number of meets that we attend. We have made a number of other cuts, mostly in the line of equipment that we furnish the athletes. As you know, the coaches have become bus drivers over the past several years by driving vans and cars to many of our meets. Athletes have made great sacrifices by providing much of their own equipment. They also sleep three and sometimes four to a room on trips (mattresses on the floor and box springs double the number that we can put in a room). Also $10 per day meal money does not go very far in today's restaurants, except the fast food places such as McDonald's, etc.