As someone who enjoys watching, reading about and attending sporting events, this has been a hard time for me.
Truly agonizing.
I even miss watching the kids running through town while they are training for track meets.
And while baseball and softball seasons are usually shortened by the long spikes of winter slowly sliding into spring, I miss watching and following our local teams.
As far as losing the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, that alone put three nails in my coffin. By the way, I hope I have a 30-nail coffin.
Some say the NCCA closed all sports down to keep the UMD Bulldogs from winning another NCAA hockey title. As an ex “UmdeeDumdee”, that sounds like a reasonable explanation to me.
In 1973 CCHS took 11 kids to the state track meet. There were three classes then, so we got a few more kids to state then we might get now, but then again, maybe all of the same kids would have made it to state today.
Bruce Anderson was a senior who ran the first legs of our mile relay and sprint medley relay teams. At state Bruce ran 50.1, 50.2 and 50.3 for his three relay legs. Convert those 440’s into 400 meters and he’s in the 49-second range for those legs.
Running on that mile relay team, which still holds the school record, was Bruce (Bun), Billy Bockovich, Eldon Scheffler and Rick Linnell. Those four ran as a unit from ninth through twelfth grades. Their senior year they won the Big 10 against the three Duluth schools, Central, East, Denfeld, and Hermantown, Cloquet etc. They were unbeaten until the state meet, where they took fifth place.
That same weekend Rick Linnell ran 2:00 flat to finish seventh in the final of the 880. He ran in a windstorm, with the winning time of 1:58 recorded by Andy Bunge, who would later star at the University of Minnesota.
His junior year Andy ran 1:53 for the half mile. A sleeper in the field was a kid from Barnum. We ran against Barnum or saw Barnum at every meet but we didn’t have a clue about this kid.
At Districts, Barnum’s Coach told coach Chuck Beberg his runner was going to run behind Eldon Scheffler and beat Eldie to take a top three spot and get to regions. That’s exactly what happened.
At regions the Barnum coach announced that his runner was going to stay behind Billy Bockovich and nip him at the end to take second. “We’ll let Rick win,” he said at the time.
And that’s exactly what happened.
So, asked Chuck and Roy Rasmussen, our other head coach, who is this kid?
The Barnum coach smiled and told us they had been sandbagging the whole season. His runner had moved from California where he had recorded 1:53 for the 880 his junior year. They were setting up Andy Bunge, Minnesota’s top half miler, to get beaten.
In the end Bunge barely held off the Barnum track star but the 1:51 time they were hoping to run, that wasn’t possible on that day.
As for Eldie and Billy, they were on two relay teams that qualified for the state meet and they ran great prelims and final legs.
Greg Eckel nearly broke our school record in the pole vault, scaling 12’10”. And the man in charge of the pole vault at state? That was Jim Ridgeway, who vaulted over 16 feet at St. Cloud and held our school record until it was broken the next year, 1974, by Guy Nelson, Greg’s cousin and a great friend to all of us.
Today there is a still a Jim Ridgeway track award given to the school’s top track athlete. It’s an honor to win the award. I received it my senior year but I always felt it should have gone to Clint Helmerson, our current school record holder in the shot put and great discuss thrower.
I have a lot of fun memories from playing sport, all sports. Sadly, the kids this spring will not get to compete and make those types of memories or make friends from other teams. My toughest competitors in distance running from all those years ago are still some of my best friends today. And as far as those friendships go, they are worth far more to me than all of the medals that I won or times I recorded on the track, but I never would have gotten to know them if I hadn’t had the chance to compete.
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