Sunday, June 25, 2000

ACU's success started with Coach Jackson in 1948
By Al Pickett
Reporter-News Staff Writer

Even Oliver Jackson admits few could have envisioned what was about to happen when Abilene Christian College elevated a 28-year-old assistant to be the Wildcats’ new head track coach in 1948.

But it was obviously the start of something special.

Saturday, a crowd of more than 400 gathered at the Teague Special Events on the Abilene Christian University campus to pay homage to what Jackson started 52 years ago.

Abilene Christian University’s legendary track and field program — tabbed by Texas Monthly in the December 1999 issue as its “Texas Sports Dynasty of the Century” — was honored Saturday at a luncheon at the Teague Center.

Outside of the Olympics, it may have been one of the greatest assemblages of track stars in one place in the sport’s history.

“We were just trying to build a team,” said Jackson, who will turn 80 next month. “We took what we could get.”

It turned out to be the start of one of the great dynasties in sports history:

ACU has won 45 national track and field championships since 1952, including 40 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), and it has done it three times in 1988, 1996 and 1999 (although the men’s indoor team tied for the 1988 championship and the other two teams won all eight titles outright).

The Wildcats have produced 32 Olympians, including two athletes who won four gold medals.

In 1953, Jackson’s ACU teams scored an amazing “triple crown” by winning the 440, 880 and mile relays at all three major relay meets (Texas, Kansas and Drake).

Jackson’s athletes set 17 world records during his coaching stint from 1948-63 and claimed 78 titles at the three major relay meets.

The beginning

Jackson had played football and run track at Abilene Christian before being called into service in World War II. When he returned in 1946, Jackson completed the nine hours he still needed to complete his degree and was then named an assistant to legendary ACU coach Tonto Coleman in both football and track.

Jackson was the line coach for head coach Garvin Beauchamp in 1950 when ACU went 11-0 for its only undefeated, untied football season in school history.

But it was on the track where Jackson built his reputation and made Abilene Christian synonymous with track and field success, a reputation that continues into the new millennium with the Wildcats’ three NCAA Division II national titles this spring.

Jackson said he landed two great athletes in his first recruiting class — state champion pole vaulter Paul Faulkner from Fort Worth and quartermiler/halfmiler Leon Lepard from Big Spring.

“Faulkner won many meets for us in the pole vault,” Jackson said, “and he became a great javelin thrower. He won an NAIA championship in the javelin. Leon Lepard was the toughest runner. We built a lot of our running events around Leon.”

The next step

Jackson’s greatest recruiting coup, however, was landing a sprinter named Bobby Morrow from San Benito in the Rio Grande Valley in 1954.

“I had known Oliver because my brother came to school here,” said Morrow, who won three gold medals at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. “That’s mainly why I came here.”

Jackson added James Segrest, the one-man gang from Bangs who had singlehandedly won a state championship as a senior at Bangs, along with Don Conder, Waymond Griggs, and Bill Woodhouse to give ACU possibly of the greatest group of sprinters ever assembled.

“We won lots of events,” Jackson said. “They got along well, too. That was pretty important.”

Not only did the group win Olympic medals, national championships and numerous relay titles, they also set nine world records.

“We had the greatest relay teams in the history of the world,” said Morrow, who has been called the greatest sprinter in U.S. history. “ACU had only 2,500 students back then, and we could compete with anyone in the world. When the big schools on either coast would hear we were coming to a meet, they wouldn’t want to compete with us.

“Of course, it mushrooms. People from all over the world wanted to run at Abilene Christian. Everyone wants to be on a winning team.”

ACU continued to set national relay records in the early 1960s with other track greats such as Earl Young, George Peterson, Dennis Richardson, James Blackwood, Calvin Cooley and Bud Clanton.

Morrow gives Jackson much of the credit for ACU’s glorious success.

“He would get us in top condition for the bigger meets,” Morrow said. “He could see it in your eyes if you needed more conditioning work or if you needed to rest. When we went to the biggest meets, we were in top condition. We worked out the whole year, and it was easy to get burned out if you weren’t careful.”

National titles

ACU won its first national team title as the host of the first NAIA meet. But the meet was held across town at McMurry University instead of at ACU.

“I was active in the NAIA or the NAIB (National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball) as it was known then,” Jackson said. “I told them if you’ll institute track and field, I’ll put on a national meet.”

ACU, however, had only a dirt track, not suitable for a national meet. So Jackson helped put on the first NAIA national meet at McMurry’s Indian Stadium in 1952. The Wildcats won the first championship in 1952 and captured national titles again in 1954 and 1955 — also at McMurry.

“We had good meets,” Jackson said. “Morrow ran his first 9.1 (world record in the 100) at McMurry.”

Continued success

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.

Wes Kittley led ACU to its first NCAA Division II women’s national championship in 1985. Since then, the Lady Wildcats have won at least one national championship in each year except 1992.

“Everyone has his day in the sun,” said Kittley, who left ACU last year to become the head track coach at Texas Tech. “In Coach Jackson’s day, he had tremendous individuals. They put the standards out there. When Coach Hood and I came in, it was more of a team thing, and we were no longer Division I.

“I would have loved to have been in Oliver’s day, but I had some great guys and girls who were Olympians. I was fortunate to be here at a time when Title IX and gender equity allowed us to have some great women’s teams.”

Kittley led the ACU men’s and women’s track teams 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.

Secret to success

Jackson was asked his secret to such enormous achievement during his 16 years as the track coach at ACU.

“You’ve got to have a good horse, and he has to have a good attitude,” he said. “We were fortunate.”

That good fortune has continued for more than 50 years.

On Saturday, ACU stopped to salute its track athletes and coaches who helped make the Wildcats the “Texas Sports Dynasty of the Century.”

Contact sports editor Al Pickett at 676-6772 or picketta@abinews.com.