Early Interscholastic Track and Field Meets
By ROBERT PRUTER
Few observers today of high school track and field competition are aware that prior to the 1930s that most all of the interscholastic competition in the sport was conducted by colleges and universities. State organizations such as the IHSA had yet to take full control of extracurriculum programs of high schools. In Illinois such institutions of higher learning as the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Illinois Wesleyan, Bradley College, Northwestern University, Beloit College (which brought in both Illinois and Wisconsin schools), and Lake Forest University (as the college was known then) during the winter and spring conducted meets for Illinois high schools.
University of Illinois Track & Field Interscholastic, 1893-1925
The University of Illinois Interscholastic was the first of its kind when it inaugurated a state meet for Illinois high schoolers in 1893. The University of Wisconsin followed with a state tournament in 1895, and the University of Michigan launched their tourney in 1898. Aside from Harvard University, which started a meet for New England prep schools in 1885, the East Coast universities were generally a bit slower than their Midwest counterparts in sponsoring interscholastic meets. Princeton began one in 1897 and the other meets, such as Yale and Pennsylvania, came after the turn of the century.
First University of Illinois Track Meet, 1893
The first Illinois meet was established by the University of Illinois Athletic Association, the institution's student-run organization. It sent out invitations to all high school captains across the state.
Peoria High won the first meet, and on that team was future Olympian Herbert Jamison and the first All-American football player from the Midwest, Clarence Herschberger. The premier power in track and field in the first two decades was Englewood High of Chicago. From 1893 to 1912 Englewood took four firsts, two seconds, and four thirds. Top Englewood athletes included Clayton Teetzel, Harry Webster, Tommy Webster, James Austin Menaul (a future Olympian), Robert Maxwell, and Charles Bachman. A good majority of Englewood athletes in the 1890s never finished high school, as it was an era when high school was not considered all that essential for boys who were not going to continue their education. The few who did usually went on to university.
Chicago was a hotbed of talent in the first two decades of the tournament and more than Englewood produced top talent. Hyde Park took state in 1903 with a team led by one of the premier high school athletes in the country, Walter Eckersall. Other top Hyde Park athletes in the early years were Phillip Comstock, Clyde Way, and William Shepard. South Division (and later as Phillips) won state titles in 1902 and 1906 with the help of superb relay teams and produced such athletes as Hugo Friend (a 1906 Olympian), Clarence Buckwalter, Paul Henderson, Joe Borden, and Frank Kuhn. North Division produced Nelson Norgren (a future basketball and football All-American) and Walter Steffin (a future football All-American. Crane never won a state champion but produced such stars as Allen Bloomfeldt, Maulding Gibbs, and Morris Myers.
The Illinois Interscholastic suffered a shock in 1899 and 1900 when tiny Biggsville, a town near Quincy, took the state championship with a two-man team named Cliff Bell and Dave Daugherty, who by the time they took their second state title were 23 and 24 years of age respectively. Needless to say, a rule was soon put in the books limiting the age to under 21 years of age. After Biggsville's two championship for the next decade the sportswriters would write up the state meet as a contest between the city boys and the country boys. Generally, the country boys did well in the field events, a result perhaps of a rugged farm life of pitching hay, pushing plows, and tossing cow pies. For example, in 1910 future Olympian Richard Leslie Byrd of Milford set a national interscholastic record in the discus with a toss of 139 feet, 5 inches.
The University of Illinois adopted a two-class system with the 1914 tournament: a Class A division for schools with more than 400 students and Class B for schools with less. With most of the country boys being relegated to the Class B division sportswriter talk about city boys versus country boys came to an end. In 1916 Illinois introduced a Class C division for private schools. The division was won by Evanston Academy, but there was such a small turnout that the Class C tourney ended with the 1916 meet. Taking first in the pole vault in that meet was future Olympian Edwin Myers of Lake Forest Academy.
The second decade of the 20th century saw the emergence of Oak Park and University highs as the major powers. After World War I Oak Park continued its dominance, but University went down in enrollment and went into decline. Deerfield-Shields of Highland Park became a factor in track and field with the Kimball brothers, David and Wallace. In the 1920 state meet, David Kimball smashed the national interscholastic record in the low hurdles, formerly held by Frank Loomis (who established his record in Minnesota in 1916).
The University of Illinois Interscholastic unlike the Michigan and Iowa meets was generally a closed affair, limited to Illinois athletes. The school experimented having a few out of town schools in 1908 (when it invited St. Louis Central and Benton Harbor) and in 1910 (when it invited Milwaukee South Division), but afterward it remained a closed meet. In contrast, the University of Michigan meet was an open or invitational tournament, so that from 1913 to 1920 it was won by Illinois schools. In the 1920 meet, three Illinois track and field powers — University, Hyde Park, and LaGrange — chose not to participate in the Illinois state meet in order to participate in the University of Michigan meet held the same day. University won the meet.
In the 1920s Hyde Park reemerged as a track power, perhaps drawing the athletes that University High was no longer getting. University High's last gasp was in 1923, when they had the extraordinary Eugene Goodwillie. In the state meet he led University to second place and tied a national record in the 220 dash. Hyde Park vied throughout the decade with Oak Park, Senn, and Tilden Tech for track titles. Senn took the title in 1926, and was led by its ace hurdler, Bob Rodgers, who tied the national record in the 220 low hurdles. Another national record was set in 1926, when Tommy Miller of Elmwood and R. Wiggins of Eldorado tied for the honors in the high jump. Tilden Tech emerged in the late 1920s with future Olympian Ralph Metcalfe and Jimmy Patterson. In the 1928 meet, Metcalfe led Tilden Tech to the state championship while tying a national high school record in the 100 dash and breaking the national high school record in the 220 dash.
With the 1926 tourney, the University of Illinois resumed a one-class meet, and also began district meets to determine qualifiers for the state meet. Also the Illinois High School Athletic Association (IHSAA), which later removed "Athletic" from its name, began sponsoring the meet in conjunction with the University of Illinois. In 1932 the IHSAA took over full sponsorship of the meet. That year Oak Park, led by Randall Herman, who set a new national record in the 100 dash, won the team championship for the third year in a row. Tying the national high hurdles record was Senn's Fritz Pollard Jr., whose father competing for Lane Tech won a fistful of medals in the state meet during 1911 and 1912.
University of Chicago Interscholastic: 1902-1933
The most notable of the university-sponsored interscholastic meets for Illinois high schools was that of the University of Chicago interscholastic, which became one of the country's few high school meets that was national in scope. The U of C Interscholastic was begun in 1902 by the school's famed athletic director and coach, Amos Alonzo Stagg. The tournament was usually scheduled during the first weekend of June. Stagg intended from the beginning to make the meet national in scope. Publicly, the tournament was promoted as a means to develop and nourish interscholastic track and field, but privately it also served as an ideal recruiting tool for the University of Chicago track and field program.
Stagg has developed a reputation as an early saint of intercollegiate athletics. John Underwood's beautiful tribute to Stagg in Sports Illustrated August 29, 1962 (republished in 1994) typified the modern era's deification of the man. The author's assertion that "Stagg abhorred recruiting of any sort" mislead his readers into thinking that recruiting was not done. He did not offer monetary inducements, but he did cut corners, and he most definitely vigorously recruited athletes. Stagg would send invitations to top athletes across the nation — as well as to the top finishers in the University of Illinois meet held in the third week of May — and secure their participation. If he liked what he saw in the tournament he would personally write to each athlete, many times repeatedly, to try to entice him to make the University of Chicago his school of choice.
In 1903, for example, Stagg wrote repeatedly to the great long distance trackster James Lightbody from Indiana urging him to attend Chicago. Lightbody himself demurred because he felt he lacked the proper academic background. Stagg assured him he could work something out. Lightbody eventually came to Chicago, but during his remarkable career there he was often put on academic probation because he couldn't handle the academic work. Stagg compared to later corps of college coaches most assuredly was an educator as well as a coach, but his tenure at the University of Chicago was one where he made allowances here and there in pursuit of prize athletes.
In the early years of the tournament, most of the team champions were Illinois schools, as most out-of-state teams rarely sent full teams. Up to World War II, only Grinnell, from Iowa (1902), Mercersburg Academy, from Pennsylvania (1907), and Citrus Union, from Azusa, California (1912), broke local school dominance. Lewis Institute, a private school on Chicago's West Side, was an early power, but suburban Oak Park and University High (an associate school of the University of Chicago) dominated later on. Probably the most extraordinary meet in the pre-war years was the 1916 meet, won by Oregon, which swamped the competition with just two outstanding athletes, Sherman Landers and Frank Loomis. Landers' feat of taking three golds and two silvers, plus running three heats, was probably the most extraordinary performance by a high school trackster in history. Both Landers and Loomis participated in the 1920 Olympic Games. Among the other exceptional athletes to come out of the meet in the early years were dash man William Hogenson of Lewis Institute (1904 Olympics medalist), discus thrower Merritt Giffin of Joliet (1908 Olympics medalist), discus thrower Richard Leslie Byrd of Milford (1912 medalist), and long jumper Solomon Butler of Rock Island (national champion).
Given the national scope of the tournament, American interscholastic records were set regularly at the meet, and Illinois athletes made their share. In 1907 Benjamin Schnur of Lake Forest Academy set a national record in the high hurdles. In 1908 Percival of Lake Forest Academy set a record in the 880 run and Eugene Schobinger of Harvard School set a record in the pole vault. In 1915 Percy Graham of University High set a national pole vault record.
Because exigencies of World War I, the tournament was discontinued after the 1917 meet. The tournament resumed in 1921 with a truly national scope, and also a new separate division for private academies. The only local school to win the tournament during the 1920s was University, which won in 1923 on the strength of virtually one athlete, Eugene Goodwillie, who equaled a national record in the 220 dash. It was the last great gasp of one of the more formidable athletic powers of the previous fifteen years. The most successful schools in the meet during the 1920s were Cedar Rapids Washington, Ft. Collins (Colorado), and Gary Froebel.
Some of the top Illinois athletes in the 1920s who made an impact in the Stagg tourney were Ralph Metcalfe of Tilden Tech (1932 and 1936 Olympic medalist), John Brooks of Hyde Park (Olympic games participant), Jimmy Patterson of Tilden Tech, and Bob Rodgers and Bill Ramsey of Senn. In the 1924 meet, R. Olmstead of downstate Victoria set a national interscholastic record in the high jump with a leap of 6 feet, 1 inch.
By 1930 the tournament had come under fire from the National Federation of High School Athletics, who represented educators from the public schools. They saw little educational benefit from the carnival of high school kids traveling hundreds, even thousands of miles, to participate in a track and field meet, and began to taking control of high school athletics away from the universities and colleges. Their first requirement was that Stagg could only invite athletes from schools belonging to state associations. Thus, beginning with the 1930 meet, Stagg could no longer invite athletes from private academies, and the separate academy division was discontinued.
In the first years of the 1930s more and more state associations banned their athletes from attending the Stagg meet and other intersectional contests. Gary Froebel High, for example, which had taken the Stagg meet in 1929 and 1930 was not allowed by the Indiana High School Association under a new regulation barring intersectional contests to defend its title in the 1931 meet. That year Maine, with the great two man squad of Bob Kennicott and Marsh Miller, took the title. Another local school, Deerfield-Shields, set a national record in the two-mile relay. The 1932 featured a strong field that broke several national records, notably one by Fritz Pollard Jr. of Senn set a national mark in the low hurdles.
The last year of the tournament, 1933, did not end in a whimper either. Eleven meet records and five national interscholastic records were broken, none, however, by local school talent. Most notable was the presence of the legendary track and field superstar, Jesse Owens, who led his school, Cleveland East Technical, to the national title, while setting national interscholastic records in the 100 dash, 220 dash, and long jump. Most extraordinary was that 100 dash record, which tied the world record then held by Frank Wykoff.
Northwestern University Interscholastic: 1902-1913
The Northwestern University Interscholastic was inaugurated in 1902 the same year as the University of Chicago Interscholastic. Whereas the Chicago Interscholastic had aspirations from the beginning to be national in scope, Northwestern desired to merely have a Midwest focus. The first year's meet began unseasonably early, on April 26th. The superb Hyde Park team led by Walter Eckersall took the championship. Northwestern's was the only interscholastic that year to invite Hyde Park, which had run afoul of the authorities over eligibility problems. But perhaps to get the tournament off to a flying start Northwestern authorities chose to overlook Hyde Park indiscretions. The 1903 meet saw Hyde Park again take the meet and the face-off between Eckersall and William Hogenson of Lewis Institute. Hogenson won in what was considered an upset at the time. The following year Hogenson and William Varnell of Lewis Institute led their team to the championship again.
After the 1902 meet Northwestern gradually move its date later in the season so that by the 1909 tourney it was in the last weekend of May. In the 1912 meet the Northwestern tried a novel approach, conducting a meet in two categories — one for out-of-town schools and one for Chicago area schools. Northwestern's last tournament in 1913 was limited to out-of-town schools and was won by West Division, Milwaukee. The Northwestern perhaps terminated its outdoor tournament to concentrate on its highly successful and increasingly visible indoor tournament in the last weekend of March.
Beloit College Interscholastic: 1907-1921
When Beloit College inaugurated its meet in 1907 the last piece of the puzzle was put in place for a tremendous outdoor season for Chicago area schools. The Beloit College meet was scheduled the first week of May, and it was followed by the Lake Forest College Interscholastic the second week of May. These two meets helped the athletes tune up for the University of Illinois Interscholastic held the third week of May. The month was ended with the Northwestern meet the fourth week of May. The first week of June was usually the Cook County meet and the second week the season was topped off by the University of Chicago Interscholastic.
Beloit College always gathered a representative number of top Illinois and Wisconsin schools to the meet, but the strongest Wisconsin schools, usually from Madison and Milwaukee, never won the tournament. Eight of the fourteen meets were won by Oak Park. In 1916 Beloit made the interscholastic a two-class tournament, and Oregon with the fabulous Sherman Landers and Frank Loomis easily took the Class B division. They could have easily taken the tournament had it been a one-class affair like the previous year. The Class B tournament allowed such schools as Lockport and Hinsdale to win championships for the years they were endowed with unusually good talent.
Lake Forest University Interscholastic: 1904-1920
The Lake Forest University Interscholastic was inaugurated in 1904 and from the beginning always had a field strong in private schools. In its sixteen years of championships, Lake Forest Academy won a total of five times, and Evanston Academy, Lewis Institute, Culver Military Academy, and University likewise won titles. The field was also strong in north shore schools, as when in 1919 Deerfield-Shields won the championship with the remarkable brothers David and Wallace Kimball. The Lake Forest meet was generally conducted the second week of May, and served as important stop between the Beloit College Interscholastic the week before and the University of Illinois Interscholastic the week after.
University of Pennsylvania Relays: "National High School Mile-Relay Championship"
The University of Pennsylvania Relays, held on the last weekend of April, became one of the premier events the track and field season shortly after its founding in 1899. Like many such intercollegiate meets of the day, it provided relay competition for secondary schools. In 1902 under the sponsorship of University of Chicago's Amos Alonzo Stagg, local secondary schools began the annual custom of sending a representative relay team to compete in what was then considered a national championship even though representatives only came from Illinois, New England, and the Middle Atlantic region. To select a representative the local schools would compete for the "western championship" at the University of Chicago.
The Chicago schools had extraordinary success in the first years of the national mile-relay competition, taking four firsts and one second from 1902 to 1906. In 1902, the South Division winning relay team of Clarence Buckwalter, Paul Dickey, Paul Henderson, and J. Horovitz served as the core for the full South Division team taking state title, the Cook County title, and the inaugural University of Chicago Interscholastic. The Hyde Park winning relay team of 1903 included the famed Walter Eckersall, Tom Hammond, Philip Comstock, and Norman Barker. The relay team was central to Hyde Park's success in winning both the Northwestern Interscholastic and the state meet that year. The 1904 Hyde Park relay team of Comstock, Barker, Taylor, and Smith could only manage second at Pennsylvania. In 1905, Phillips, continuing the tradition the school had established when it was South Division, started producing great relay teams. The 1905 team of Joe Borden, Oliver Reilly, C. H. Burke, and L. H. Bremer took the Pennsylvania national mile, and in 1906 with Pollack replacing Bremer seized the title again. The 1906 relay helped Phillips that year win the indoor Cook County title and tie for the state championship with West Aurora.
In 1907 the Phillips relay foursome (Reilly and newcomers Frank Kuhn, Goldberg, and Hayne) again won the western championship, but only because the favored University High's anchor-leg runner fell down 25 yards from the tape while way ahead of the field. Thus both Phillips and University (Harold Wampler, George Morris, Eugene Morton, and Burton Stadden) were sent to Philadelphia. University took third and Phillips took fifth. Because of lack of success by Chicago schools in subsequent years they stopped competing after the 1911 relays.
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Illinois High School Association.