Thursday, November 25, 1999
ACU’s track success reaches dynasty
status
By LANCE FLEMING
Special Writer
Abilene Christian University’s track and field program
— a national powerhouse for the better part of the last half
of the 20th Century — has been named the Texas Sports Dynasty
of the Century in the December issue of Texas Monthly magazine.
The magazine gave ACU’s track program the nod over the
Fort Worth Panthers baseball club of the Jake Atz-Clarence “Big
Boy” Kraft era, which won six consecutive Texas League championships.
ACU has won 42 national track and field championships since
1952, including 37 in NCAA Division II competition. ACU is the
only school in NCAA history to sweep all four national championships
in one year (both the men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor
championships), which it has done twice now with sweeps in both
1996 and 1999. The 1988 women both championships and the men’s
team won the outdoor, but tied for the indoor title.
ACU has come within one team winning one championship of turning
the trick on three other occasions (1994, 1997 and 1998).
The ACU program has produced 32 Olympians and 20 world-record-holders.
The Wildcats’ first national championships came in 1952
at the NAIA outdoor meet. ACU went on to win titles in 1954 and
1955 under the direction of head coach Oliver Jackson, assistant
coach Bill McClure and athletes such as Bobby Morrow, Don Conder,
James Segrest, Waymond Griggs and Bill Woodhouse.
Morrow won three gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters
and 400 relay at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Morrow
— who has been called “the greatest sprinter of all
time” and “world’s fastest human” — set
three individual world records and was part of six world-record-setting
relay teams, including five at ACU.
ACU track greats Earl Young, George Peterson, Dennis Richardson,
James Blackwood, Calvin Cooley and Bud Clanton would bring more
recognition to ACU in the early 1960s. It was the team of Cooley,
Richardson, Clanton and Young that set new world records for the
880-yard and 80-meter relays with a time of 1:22.6 on April 7,
1961.
Young, who won a gold medal as part of the United States’
1,600-meter relay team at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, ran on two
U.S. world-record-setting relay teams, and set the world record
in the indoor 500-yard dash with a 55.5 in Louisville, Ky., on
Feb. 16, 1963.
The magazine notes that ACU letterman Elmer Gray got the ACU
track and field tradition started by an appearance at the 1932
U.S. Olympic trials. Twenty-four years after Gray reached the
trials, Morrow won his three gold medals, and afterward appeared
on the cover of Sports Ilustrated, Life and Sport magazines and
made an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
His three gold medals now belong to the Smithsonian Institute,
Texas Sports Hall of Fame and ACU.
ACU’s dominance on the NCAA national championship scene
began in 1982 when former head coach Don Hood led the Wildcat
men’s team to both the NCAA Division II and NAIA outdoor
national championships.
Since that time, the ACU men’s team has won at least one
national championship every year except 1989-92 and 1995. The
ACU men’s program owns 22 national championships and has
won both the Division II indoor and outdoor championships in 1988,
1996, 1997 and 1999.
About the time the men’s team was gaining prominence,
former head coach Wes Kittley was taking the women’s program
to new levels of excellence.
Kittley led the ACU women’s team to its first national
championship in 1985 when it won the NCAA Division II outdoor
national championship.
ACU has won at least one national championship in each year
since 1985 except 1992. The lady Wildcats have won both the Division
II indoor and outdoor championships in 1988, 1994, 1995, 1996,
1998 and 1999.
Kittley, who resigned last summer as men’s and women’s
head coach to take over the track and field program at Texas Tech,
has led his team to a combined 29 national championships, the
most of any track and field coach in NCAA history and the second-most
of any collegiate coach in history.
Just a few weeks ago, members of the 1956 and 1961 world-record-setting
relay teams were on campus to be honored for their accomplishments,
and to be interviewed and photographed for an article about them
in an upcoming issue of Sports Illustrated.
More honors
The recent accolades for the ACU track program are just more
in the recent list of honors bestowed on Big Country athletes
and coaches.
Texas Monthly named former Sweetwater, TCU and Washington Redskins
quarterback Sammy Baugh as its Texas Quarterback of the Century.
Baugh, 85, still lives on his ranch near Rotan.
And the Dallas Morning News recently named the Abilene High
football teams of the 1950s as its High School Football Team of
the Century and Abilene native Gordon Wood, 85, as its High School
Football Coach of the Century.
The Eagles, led by coach Chuck Moser, won 49 straight games
and three consecutive state championships from 1954-56.
Wood, a graduate of Wylie High School and Hardin-Simmons University,
is the winningest high school football coach in Texas history
with 405 victories. He won nine state championships, two at Stamford
and seven at Brownwood, where Wood still lives.
Lance Fleming is the sports information director at Abilene
Christian University.
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Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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