STILL THE BEST, 30 YEARS LATER

by Paul McMullen

Blame it on the Cold War.

Once upon a time, the defunct Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics – Russia and its satellite states – challenged the United States for the world’s heart and mind, if not its disposable income.

The Russians ruled in ballet, borscht, and just about any track and field pursuit that required technique and precision. All of which got the notice of a young teacher from Cumberland with zero experience in the sport when he was asked to revive the program at Arundel High in 1968.

“When I started at Arundel, I knew nothing, and that was a bonus,” Ron Evans recalls. “I had to learn the entire program from scratch. I had the best coaches in the world, because I learned from the best.”

Evans did the expected - diving into a copy of Ken Doherty’s Omnibook – and the unusual. He attended a clinic by a Russian discus thrower, read translations of Russian dissertations on the budding concept of visualization, studied bootleg film of Russians jumping.

Xenophobes would argue that it was not the most patriotic approach, but without that curiosity and rigor, there might not have been an Old Mill Patriots’ track and field dynasty and an upcoming 30th anniversary.

Two years after Evans began coaching Arundel, the Wildcats won the state 4A championship. A decade after he first delved into the sport, Evans headed an Old Mill powerhouse that, on the scoreboard and in my judgment, is the best high school team the state of Maryland has ever seen.

Think back to last spring, and how strong Meade seemed.

Those Mustangs won the state 4A title with 57 points.

The 1978 Old Mill boys, by contrast, scored 107 at the state 4A meet and won by a whopping 67 points. The total and margin of victory are believed to be records for the big meet.  Mervo posted 106 in 1995, when two-time Olympian James Carter was a junior. That Fred Hendricks’ juggernaut scored in 13 events. Lacking only a premier quarter-miler and - ironic for a program that would produce two 15-footers – a pole-vaulter, Old Mill scored in 14 of the 18 events at the 4A meet, posting five marks that remain school records, proof of their legacy in a program that for several decades was the steadiest in the area.

The 1978 roster ranged from Ralph Spry, who has gone on to win NCAA titles as an athlete and a coach, to a gangly freshman who would taste Super Bowl fame - albeit in a hilarious television ad – to a distance ace who died much too soon.

Before he had a chance to run as a college sophomore, cancer took Bob Golliday in January 1980. That spring, Old Mill dedicated its stadium in his name, on the night of the first Bob Golliday Invitational.

The 29th annual Golliday Invitational will be conducted April 30. Evans and his 1978 assistants, Mike Hampe and Roy Payne, will be in the house, and are inviting all members of that remarkable team to join them and take a bow.

ENDURING SUCCESS

How strong and sustaining was Evans’ program?

The Old Mill boys have spread seven outdoor state championships over four decades, the 1970s, 80s, 90s and this one.

The Patriots never focused on one gender, as they had a girl clear 5 feet, 6 inches in the high jump in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The first, Jalene Chase, went 5-11 and finished fifth at the 1976 U.S. Olympic Trials, a few months after the school CHANGE the school to OLD MILL had completed its inaugural scholastic year in style, beginning a run of seven outdoor state titles in a 14-year span despite the fact that the place opened without a senior class.

A year later, in 1977, the Old Mill girls repeated and the boys shared the 3A title with Fairmont Heights, which benefited from a dubious disqualification on a uniform violation for a Patriot discus thrower. Evans was determined to create more margin of error for their 4A debut, as Old Mill was entering a crowded landscape.

Baltimore City had yet to enter the MPSSAA, leaving the late Jim Ward and some outrageously good Northwestern teams on the outside looking in, but Dick Estes was honing the Woodlawn hurdle factory, Gerry Martin had Perry Hall contending with a leave-no-event uncovered philosophy like Evans’, and Prince George’s County was brimming with nationally ranked competitors.

How deep was the distance running? Few left the state 4A meet at Westminster wagging about Old Mill. Kenwood’s Mike Sheely, the Penn Relays two-mile champion, broke 4:12 in the mile, but came in third, behind Westminster rival Karsten Schulz and Laurel junior Wayne Morris, a surprise champion in 4:10.9.

The Patriots had their own marvelous crew of distance runners, under the tutelage of Payne, the head girls’ coach. Striding through the sprawling Old Mill complex, which consists of a senior high and two middle schools, were five guys who would break 9:40 for two miles for the Patriots. Two others would bust 4:20 for the mile.

The prep mile bests for Golliday and classmate Jay Simonetta convert to 4:18.0 and 4:18.4, respectively, in the 1,600. In the first final at the state meet, they teamed with Scott Simonetta, Jay’s younger brother, and Jim Haskell to finish second in the two-mile relay with a time that converts to 7:51.8.

Golliday came back with a personal best in the two-mile, the equivalent of a 9:22.6 3,200, leading Morris for seven laps but settling for second. In the 880, the Simonettas went 3-5, Scott upsetting Jay, in times that translate to 1:55.3 and 1:57.6 for the metric two laps.

David Taylor, a 1,300-yard tailback for a football team that started 8-0 in 1977 but fell short of what was then a 4-team state tournament, had 10.6 speed in the 100 and was third in both sprints at the state meet.

With 14.4 credentials in the hurdles, Leon Jones was a state runnerup. Greg Dorsey, Jones, J.J. Conway and Taylor stole the 440 relay, in 43.1 on a rock-hard track.  Barry McCrimmon replaced Jones on the 880 relay that took third CHANGE TO FOURTH. Jim Wilson got points in the 300 hurdles, but as good as the Patriots were on the track, they were even better in the field, where their 42½ points would have been enough to take the team title.

STAR POWER

One month after he reached 49-6 in the triple jump at the Penn Relays, Spry added two feet to the state meet record with a 49'-1½ that lasted two decades as the Memorial Day weekend standard. In the long jump, he moved from third to first on his final attempt, stretching 22-9.

“It was like jumping on concrete up at Westminster,” Spry said, of a runway that was more parking lot than rubberized surface. “Every time I jumped, I had to replace broken spikes on my shoes.”

Tony Harvin handled the weights. He tossed the discus 160'-9, and busted loose at states in the shot, with a series that included personal bests of 51-7½, 53-8, 54'-½, and 55-11½.

Kevin Johnson was a 6-6 high-jumper, but teammate Jerry Fries loved the big meets and finished third with a clearance of 6-4. Spry was backed by junior Robert Dorsey, who left Old Mill with personal bests of 21-11 and 46-0. Chris Christian was another state scorer, in the discus.

The Patriots got 30 points from their three first-place finishes, 32 from four runner-up placements, and 30 out of third place, where Old Mill was recorded five times.

BEYOND OLD MILL

Golliday took his steeplechase potential to Hagerstown Junior College, only to take ill as a freshman with an extremely rare form of cancer.

Spry, who initially headed a four-man Old Mill contingent at Odessa Junior College in Texas, has become one of the most distinguished Marylanders the sport has ever produced.

He wasn’t fast – or interested – enough to make the Old Mill relays, but Spry matured into a national-class sprinter in junior college, velocity that helped him to an NCAA long jump title for Mississippi, with a wind-aided 27-5¼. He had bad timing, as fellow Americans Carl Lewis, Mike Powell and Larry Myricks swept the Olympic medals in 1988.

Spry became an Army officer and then a coach, taking over at Auburn University a decade ago. His women won the 2006 NCAA title, and his men expect to contend for national honors in June.

“A lot of what I do today is shaped by Ron Evans,” Spry says. “At Old Mill, we went hard, believed in each other, and weren’t afraid to challenge each other. You take care of people, and you make it fun to compete.”

As an Old Mill sophomore, Spry prepared for baseball tryouts until the loquacious Taylor and other friends lured him to track and field. They prospered in part because of a brainchild of Evans, a weight-training program that drew national acclaim. At one point in the 1980s, over 1,000 Old Mill students took the course for credit.

High school jumpers are fortunate to have one technician instructing them. Spry had two.

Hampe is best known for coaching Old Mill to an unprecedented five straight state wrestling tournament titles from 1989-93, but he was a track and field champion before Evans considered the sport. Hampe won a state pole vault title for Severna Park in 1964, wielded the first fiberglass pole ever seen in Anne Arundel County, and relished debating field event theory with Evans.

“We used to bang heads over the most minuscule detail,” Hampe recalls. “Do you land on a flat foot, or your heel, on the second phase (step) of the triple jump? We got films, played them in slow motion. I think I won that one, but Ron still won’t admit it.

“Seriously, my coaching improved so much because of Ron. I learned so much from him that I applied to coaching wrestling and teaching health. We used trash talking to motivate the kids with humor, and they never heard him say anything negative. Ron taught them skills, how to compete, even body posture, how to carry yourself like a winner.”

In 1978, a freshman named Lester Speight took that all in. As a senior, he set a state meet record of 37.6 in the 300 hurdles. If you watched Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003, you may remember him as Terry Tate, Reebok Office Linebacker.

An eclectic roster made for interesting dynamics. There were Army brats like Spry, others who had grown up on estates overlooking the Severn River, and some who hailed from shotgun shacks.

“The first year Old Mill opened, there were fights every day,” Evans said. “We had kids from nine different feeder schools, and everyone was marking their turf.”

Evans marked the gym, literally, as he sold the late Jim Dillon, the athletic director, on having a contractor saw a hole in the gym floor. He wanted to make use of an extra pole vault box, one reason Old Mill had those two 15-foot vaulters in the 1980s.

Evans taught himself to hurdle, and used a 16-milimeter camera to film his people in the technical events, way before the VCR, let alone the digital play back on your cell phone.

“Take the complex, and make it simple,” Evans says. “When I began at Arundel, I devised a checklist for the hurdles that reached 15 items. At the end, I could solve 4 or 5 of those by distilling it to one point of emphasis, run tall.”

Evans’ primary objective in moving from Arundel to Old Mill in 1975 was to be a head football coach. He coached the Patriots until 1982, when he turned his full attention to track and field. Between nearly three decades of coaching boys indoors and out, and then girls, he was in charge or influenced 20 state champion teams and 58 that ruled Anne Arundel County.

Evans is uncomfortable with the Old Mill 1978 as a high water argument, because he will always have a soft spot for his first two state title teams at Arundel.

The 1978 Patriots finished second in the two-mile relay, then a recent addition to the state meet program. Minus those eight points, they would have scored 99.

Arundel won the 4A title in 1971 with 95 points. Wendell Belt won three individual events and Ron Penny was among the state’s first quarter-milers to break 48 seconds, but Evans wonders if it would have happened without his Pied Piper. Lou Carter proudly anchored the Arundel relays, then became a record-setting rusher during a University of Maryland football renaissance.

The power of positive thinking, as preached by Evans, was so strong that it inspired me to pull back from my typewriter – ask your parents – and try coaching.

In 1982, one season after I got out of their way and let Evans do his stuff, Dale Irons went 4:18.2 in the 1,600, and Ellen Barrett went 5:08.3. It was the fastest boy-girl mile combination ever in the Baltimore area - and just one more distinction for Evans and Old Mill.

Editorial Note: Paul McMullen was the public address announcer at the state 4A meet in 1978. Between newspaper jobs, he was an Old Mill assistant coach in the spring of 1981 and the winter of 1981-82, when his distance runners cured his split infinitives and dangling participles. He added track and field to The Sun’s All-Metro offerings in the 1980s, and reported on Baltimoreans James Carter and Bernard Williams from the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the 2004 Athens Olympics.

YouTube video of one of the Rebok "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker" spots, featuring Larry Speight, a member of the 1978 Old Mill team.