Rich Mach, Ph.D.
VP “W” Club ‘63

Dedicated to my lost teammate, Carl Reid who left us on 18 May 2009. Canuck, as we called him, was 2nd man on the blazing ’61 X-C team, which finished 3rd in the NCAA national championship held close by on MSU’s golf course back then. As a freshman he’d already run 4:11 indoors and 4:10 indoor in June @ Ft. Wayne, but was eventually plagued with a serious injury coming out of his Cerutty inspired training, which included running repeated sand dunes, sometimes with ankle weights. His Achilles tendon completely detached. Like the then mile WR holder, Australia’s Herb Elliot, he was very lean, even willowy, muscular, very strong, driven, tall and a fierce competitor. Coach Dales feels he would have been Canada’s national mile champion had he not been burdened with an extra bone in his foot. He lived most all of his adult life in the LA Basin, worked for many years for Parke Davis, and for more than half a century was John Bork’s good friend. Wherever he may now be, his surviving teammates agree that with his Achilles tendon injury now irrelevant, there’s a large sand dune about the size of The Sleeping Bear up in the Leelanau somewhere close by.

The George Dales Halcyon Decade
Coach Robert Parks, who took his Eastern Michigan track and field teams to innumerable MAC and CCC championships and coached an Olympic 100 m champ in Hasley Crawford, a bronze medallist in Earl Jones, an immensely talent 800/1500 m runner as well as 15 Olympians and who was assistant coach at Western for 5 years before assuming his EMU duties, recently combed through the MAC individual championship results between 1948 and 2002 and listed the names and years of all Western athletes who won golds in track, but not {yet} the field events. After looking at his fine compilation, I examined the period between 1954 and 1963, a full decade that -- once looked into -- we might find ourselves ready to call The George Dales Halcyon Decade in WMU’s track history.

During that period, this man, who’d competed for Miami of Ohio as a pole vaulter, coached the Western athletes who won no less than 40 individual championships including two NCAA individual champs and then 3 years later two back-to-back NCAA X-C team championships. Some of his stellar athletes were such superb competitors that in the MAC championships they won multiple events in the same year or different events on different years—sometimes 2 or 3 years running. If we look at the nine running events Bob provides us with complete data for namely { 100 yds/100 m - 220 yds/200 m - 440 yds/400 m - 880 yds/ 800 m - 1500 m / mile - 2 mile/3 mile/5km - 110 m/120 yds HH - 220 yds/440yds/400 m hurdles - 800 yd/440yd/400 m relay }* …………. and multiply them by the 10 years of the decade, we have 90 individual MAC track champions in that period. {For these purposes, the four athletes forming a relay are counted, perhaps both unrepresentatively and uncharitably -- as one individual championship} Forty of these 90 athletics individual championships came from Western; that is, a full 44.4% were Western track stars.

When we compare this reality with what it would have been like in that conference had all 8 schools the first 2 yrs, then all 7 the rest of that decade been equally competitive with each other, we’d have had each of them scoring about either 11 or 12 championships during the decade. But things were hardly equal. During that decade, in those 10 events, the other usually six schools were left with a total of 50 championships to fight for amongst themselves; leaving them each with less than one championship -- on the average -- per year. Or the 5 remaining championships distributed among the other 6 schools after Western took it’s averaged usual four. One year, 1957, WMU won 5. That was the sheer dominance of our storied teams during that time in MAC track history. That is, on average, Western would take actually 4 individual championships of the 9 running events and each of the others – 0.8 on average. Overall, WMU has won 18 MAC T and F championships between 1948 and 2002; two behind the EMU teams largely coached by Bob Parks.

I would like to tell you a little about some of Western’s now truly storybook characters who dominated their event or events during their matriculation @ our school during that 54 year period. At least the ones I do know about. Some I trained with and competed against; others some of you out there can fill in the blanks for me. Two awesome track athletes during that 54 year period, startlingly, won no less than 5 track individual championships in their career @ Western. Three others won 4. And still three others won 3. Let me tell you about each as much as I know with hopes you will email me @ Schmedly@AOL.com and tell me more about the guys I was not privileged to know.

5 MAC Track Championship wins

Tom Duits {1500m/mile, 5,000m} dominated the MAC championships in the mid-70s, winning the mile his first two years, then the mile’s replacement, the 1500 m the third year. The latter time extrapolated out was equivalent to a 4:01.3 mile. He was the first (only bronco runner to ever break 4 minutes for the mile in 3:59.+

But this super jock didn’t stop there. He also in his junior and senior years added championships in the 5,000 meters for a total of 5; the first Western track star to accomplish 5 big wins in MAC finals competition; completing this in 1978.

A second distance star a decade later, Jesse McGuire, simply ruled the 10 K race in ‘87, ‘89 and ‘90 and the 5 K race as well in 87 and 90 for a total of 5 very big wins. In his first year of varsity competition he shared the award as most valuable MAC performer.

4 MAC Individual Championship Wins

Ira Murchinson, originally from Chicago, IL in motion was someone you actually had to see to believe. He may have been less than 5’4” tall, but was a giant on the track. He didn’t so much run down the track as hurtle down it. He not only owned the WR in the 60 yd dash indoors, but also was an Olympic Gold medallist popping off 1st leg on the winning 4 x 1 relay in the Melbourne Games in ’56. And twice equaled the 100 m outdoors WR -- hand timed back then -- in 10.2 along with 7 other men including Jesse Owens. In ’57 he had a legal 9.3 WR equaling time and also ran a blazing 20.4 in ’58 on a straight for 220. Murch’s turnover was so incredibly rapid; his legs were only a blur for most spectators. He was Wily Coyote writ large. His start was quite entirely unbelievable as if he was launched from a cannon leveled at the tape. He won the MAC 100 yard dash three times, the last in 9.5 when the world record was 9.3 held by Bobby Morrow of Texas Christian. He also won the 220 on the straight his first year. The amoebic dysentery he contracted during a 1959 competitive tour through Africa definitely curtailed his performances for nearly 3 years and he never again reached the pinnacle of his earlier accomplishments.

Only a very few years later, Jarard Ashmore, from Indiana’s Griffiths High School won the MAC champs mile his sophomore year and then doubled to win the 2 mile as well. The following two years he repeated his 2 mile win. He captained -- as first man – an undeniably talented cross country team, which had three milers, who, had they waited to be born about 10 years later, would all have been in imminent danger of breaking the then still very alive 4 minute mile barrier first broken only 7 years before. Ash was a true student of the training behind the best foot racing and distance running of that era and avidly read and studied Franz Stampfl, Percy Cerutty, Kempka, Gerschler and, later, Arthur Lydiard. As a natural born Buddhist he maintained not only the kind of mental clarity any athlete needs to achieve his goals, but was blessed with a phenomenally low resting heart rate of 29. Following his active competition years, he dedicated much of his life to the well being of children and young adults.

In the mid-80s saw the high hurdler from Western by the name of Alex Washington simple reign over all MAC comers 4 straight years {83-86}. Washington stirs many memories for his unique prowess is this highly technical and sometimes even dangerous event. He was a multi-talent individual with deep roots in music and at this writing is head of his own band.

3 Time Individual MAC Champ Wins

John Bork came out of Monroe, MI, and won the MAC Champs 440 yard dash his sophomore {‘59} and junior years, running a full second faster the 2nd year. He also took 2nd in the MAC 220 in ’60 running 21.5. In his senior year, he brought his 46.9 open quarter {MAC 440 record holder} speed to win the 880 yard run -- leading his two western teammates, Dick Greene and Rich Mach, to a sweep. Bork also anchored 3 winning mile relay teams 59-61, so we could contend he is the owner or part owner of 6 rather than 3 MAC titles.

Three weeks after the MACs, he became the only Western athlete {and trackman} in history other than Ira Murchinson to ever win an individual Division I NCAA major championship blowing by the field with 200 yards to go and running away from everyone all the way into the tape in a decisive 1:48.3. That time on that date in history was but 1.5 seconds slower than the then half mile WR held by NJ’s Tom Courtney.

John’s late race acceleration was both a thing of beauty and terribly daunting for all his competitors. He was selected as 1961 Drake Relays Athlete of the Year after running and gunning down soon-to-be X-C NCAA national champion, Oregon State’s Dale Story – the man who ran that late fall race barefooted in snow -- during the third leg of the 4 mile relay, blazing the fastest split, 4:07 and assuring the win and a new American collegiate record.

In 1962, he ran on grass in Christchurch NZ against the barrel chested man one wag once called a Sherman Tank with Overdrive, Peter Snell, when Snell set a new WR of 1:44.3 for the 880 on a 352 yd grass track. Bork’s best during the New Zealand trip was a 1:48.5 off winter training in the snow in Oxford, OH where he was the grad assistant to Robert Epskamp, yet another former WMU assistant to Coach Dales.

Later, John trained with the Hungarian ex-Olympic coach, Mihaly Igloi, in S. California. Igloi already had 3 WR holders with 6 WRs – Iharos had 4 of them including 3 at 3 different distances the same year -- among them in Hungary in the 1500m, 5 Km and 10 Km races and was coach for both the US Olympian Bob Schul and his gold medal run in ‘64 and Jim Beatty, history’s first sub 4 minute miler indoors. Had John not been injured in early ’64, many of his teammates felt he was a certainty for an Olympic berth in Tokyo.

James McNutt, a big rawboned redheaded kid from Otsego, MI won two HH MAC championships and in his senior year, two years after Bork, also the 440 yard hurdles. McNutt was a self effacing, humble athlete who took most everything in stride, had enormous will power in holding his breath for nearly 3 minutes against his distance running roomie and teammate and was a very competitive tennis player as well. In the mid-winter of the 1961 MSU Indoor Relays, he struck a hurdle hard in an early heat and was treated with a very rapidly swelling ankle – visibly apparent -- that was wonder to behold.

And, finally, a 400 m man, running 30 years later than Bork, Robert Ellington, ruled his race, unbeatable for 3 straight years in the mid 90s, and adding his fine championship races to the other 37 making up Western’s dominance of the MAC track events over a half century plus 4.

Please note:

In all of Western’s track history just covered, half the 8 men with 3 or more titles to their name came from the 54-63 era or decade, the newly claimed George Dales Halcyon Decade for MAC Champ Track.

In ‘57 and ’58, 5 Western individual championships in track were accomplished out of 9. In 54, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62 and 63 there were 4 individual championships out of 9 won by WMU athletes.

And one other observation, if we take a slightly different decade, namely that between 1956 and 1965, we can see the sheer dominance of the Western middle distance and distance stars in the MAC. In those years Western won 5 out of 10 individual golds in the mile, 7 out of the 10 championships in the 880 yd run and a simply stunning 8 -- in a row {56-63} -- out of 10 in the 2 mile/ 5,000 meters.
During that particular decade – Western owned the MAC championship flat races from the 880 on up.

The mile/1600 m relay has all data missing before ’88 and so was not used in these calculations.

Finally, in closing, one last remembrance of other fallen teammate, Jerome Bashaw, a member of the storied 60-62 cross country teams and two time All American {Steeplechase and cross country}, who left us in a most tragic way nearly a decade ago now. He was Michigan’s 2-time state high school champion -- Class A -- in X-C and the mile. Bashaw or “Crow” as we called him because of his nasely, raucous voice -- some claimed could carry from the old campus when the wind was right to the new -- was a key member of the 4 mile relay team that took on the Oregon Ducks @ The West Coast Relays in Fresno, CA when OU set nothing less than a stunning WR for that period in history {16:08.9 by four collegians} that stood for many years before an all New Zealand team broke it. While Western was outgunned that year -- OU’s Dyrol Burleson anchored in 3:57.8 – after WMU set the American record just the previous year @ Drake {on which Bashaw had also run}, Crow gave as good as he got and came back that late afternoon to run 4:09 in the open mile.

I like to think he and Carl have already found one another out there somewhere in the great beyond and are busy doing repeats up that 450 foot sand dune in the sky. Perhaps, Cerutty is there as well egging them on.

The 6 miles/10 Km and steeple are missing because those 2 races were not yet part of MAC competition. However, Gary Harris’ 28:43.70 in ’72 @ 10 K only 64 seconds slower than the then WR and, especially Jeromee Liebenberg’s incredible fully world class 8:34.7 for the 3000 m steeplechase, a mere 12.7 seconds slower than the then world record, are two entirely notable achievements in all-time MAC history. Liebenberg was most valuable performer in the Mac as you might expect in ’71. And still holds the steeple record in the MAC 38 yrs later. The only other WMU athlete who still holds a MAC record is Phil McMullen in the decathlon in ’97,12 years ago. Many other multi-event athletes are not mentioned here because of the narrowness of the focus, but Western Michigan, its fans and alumni have every right to recognize the depth and breadth of talent on all of its track teams. We can only work to assure that the MAC will once again see WMU track and X-C stars entering the record books in future.

Efforts were made to reach Ellington, Washington, Duits and McGuire, for additional insight into their Western careers, but there proved to be no response.