September 21, 2004

Homecoming Events for BBT:

Bring Back Track at Campus Classic 5K Run! You are invited to join Bring Back Track at the Campus 5k Classic which is held on October 16 at 9:00 a.m. You can log on to www.wmich.edu/race for more detailed information. We plan to participate clad in Bring Back Track T-shirts! We anticipate good publicity at the award ceremonies! (we may be old, but we are still fast!)

BBT Tailgate/Lunch at Homecoming! October 16 is also Homecoming Weekend. We are planning an 11:30 a.m. potluck lunch at Peter Livingstone-McNelis' house (314 Monroe St....just a short walk from the finish of the Campus Classic and in sight of WMU's track and on the street that runs between the University Roadhouse Restaurant and Waldo's Pub). We can proceed from there to the football game and/or staging a Bring Back Track rally across from the football stadium.

Please RSVP your intentions of coming to the race, potluck lunch, and/or rally via insidelane@msn.com by October 10 so that proper planning can be done.

Let's show Western by our participation that runners care about their sport and are upset that their sport which pays for itself frequently gets cut to support so-called revenue sports which lose millions of dollars yet continue to receive budget increases.Coach Dales addresses Senate!

Billboard Ads! BBT has been negotiating with some advertising companies to promote our movement during WMU's Homecoming Weekend. One idea is to highlight the recent accomplishments of McMullen and Nieto as well as the friendship, rivalry, and tradition that exists between EMU and WMU in track & field. In order to pull this off, however, our organization will need to raise approximately $4000 in the next couple of weeks. Please seriously consider helping organize as well as participating in the above events/actions. Donations should be sent to Bring Back Track, P.O. Box 50214, Kalamazoo, MI 49005.

Coach Bob Parks sends us more of his recollections:

This fall is the 40th anniversary of the 1964 WMU cross country team which won the NCAA title at East Lansing (the first of only three in MAC history). I was in my 4th year at Western as George Dales' asst. It snowed had snowed for several days prior to the meet and a wide path had been plowed with high banks. The weather was perfect for a team from Kalamazoo. Elmore Banton of Ohio U. roared out into the lead and no one saw him the whole race. He was long gone amid the high snow banks. Mo was later the OU coach for over 20 years. Our Mike Gallagher surprised everyone with a 7th place finish. He had gone into the meet as our 6-7 man. Bruce Burston, normally our no.1 man, was 10th, I think. I believe Oregon was 2nd and OU was 3rd. They had beaten us in the MAC meet. The next year, 1965, we also won the NCAA and Miami beat us in the MAC meet. Jim Carter, who was our 5th man in 1964, stood in the chute, right in front of Tom Sullivan of Villanova, a HS All-American from Illinois, the same state as Jim was from. He said to Sullivan, "you don't even know who I am, do you, but maybe you do now." Tom had broken 4:10 in HS and it is doubtful if Jim had broken 4:40. Neither OU in 1964 or Miami in 1965 ran very well at the nationals and both are still making excuses, but it is who runs well on the right day and we did. I always told my teams at Eastern that no one worked harder than the old Bronco runners in those days and it paid off. Incredibly hard workouts helped develop super runners from many who were ordinary in HS. I had Keith Reed's son, Mark, on my team at Eastern and he always wanted us to do the WMU workouts. I told him that, if we did, I wouldn't have a team left. They would all be hurt. We did very tough workouts, but nothing compared to the ones we did at Western. Tragic that the sport no longer exists at the school. At EMU, I always had the "Gallagher rule," which said that I could pick anyone I wanted for my 7th man for a big meet, based on my gut feeling as to how they might do. In other words, pick out a talented guy who might rise to the occasion in the big one. My guys often asked who Gallagher was. It is also the 30th anniversary of the 1974 EMU XC team, which won our 2nd ever MAC title in the sport, following our win the previous season, which was the first ever in school history (we were racing the swimmers to be the first and did it in 1973, after first competing in the MAC in the fall of 1972). This team also won the CCC and the NCAA regional (then called the district) and placed 6th in the NCAA meet at Bloomington, Ind. (if we had run as well as we did in the regionals we might have come close to winning it). Amazingly, we trained through the MAC meet (something I had never done before and would never do again). I was worried the night before when all of them were complaining about one ailment or another. Fortunately we won the MAC at CMU with Gordon Minty winning his 3rd straight individual MAC title in his first meet of the season after being belatedly declared eligible by the NCAA. Dave Smith, Tom Hollander, and Nick Ellis finishing 4-5-6 (maybe I have the order wrong). Dave Burkhart, usually in the top five, was off form, but Rick Goodman, ran great, finishing 12th (and making All-MAC) as our 5th man. We set a MAC record for low pts. with 29 over the 10k distance. The regional was at Madison, Wisc. and we destroyed the field with a total of 33 pts, which has only been broken once (by Wisc. in 1985 and they won the NCAA that year) with Hollander-2; Minty-3; Ellis-4; Burkhart-11; and Smith-13.

September 11, 2004

We hope to have an Olympic Report from George Dales soon. Here he is in Greece with his "transportation."