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University Daily Kansan Friday, April 17, 1953
Distance Aces Easton's Specialty
By CHUCK MORELOCK
When he arrived at the University, the Kansas track and field outfit was far from being a world-beater. An outdoor championship in 1946 was the only Big Seven track crown that the Jayhawkers had won in 14 years.
Distance running stacs have been a dime-a-dozen at Kansas the past six years under Coach Bill Easton.
Since coming to Kansas in 1947 from Drake university, where he had great success, his Jayhawker cross-country teams have chalked up six Big Seven championships. Kansas won the Big Seven indoor title in 1950, its first since 1934 under Easton, and repeated in 1952 and 1953. KU swept the conference outdoor meet last year in Norman.
Easton coached high school track in Indiana for several years, then moved on to Drake. He left an impressive record in the high school ranks behind him. As coach at Hammond (Ind.) High school his cross-country squads won 64 of 72 dual meets, five state championships, and three runnerup titles. The school also bagged three indoor and two outdoor state crowns.
In his undergraduate days at Indiana university, Easton was a top-notch quarter-miler under the late Billy Jayes, one of the best track and field coaches in the business. The Jayhawker mentor learned much of the hows and whys of distance coaching from the Hoosier great.
He took over his Kansas duties in the fall of 1947 and promptly accomplished a great rebuilding job to lift Kansas track out of the doldrums.
Easton was quick to produce results. His 1947 Kansas runners surprised the Big Seven by finishing one-two-three to win the conference cross-country championship on a snow-covered course in Ames, Iowa. In doing it, Kansas scored a record low of 22 points.
COACH "BILL" EASTON
In 1948, the Jayhawkers lowered their own record to 19 points in easily winning another title, and in 1949 won their third-straight crown with 22 points. Bob Karnes, one of Kansas's all-time great distance men, won the individual championship all three years.
This fall, the Kansans racked up their sixth straight 2-mile title. They capped the Big Seven indoor meet in Kansas City this spring and scored four victories in the Texas Relays in Austin three weeks ago.
Other Easton-coached aces include Fred Freiler; NCAA cross-country king for two years at Drake; Bill Mack, who ran on four NCAA cross-country championship teams, two at Drake and two at Michigan State, and Bob Karnes of KU.
His Jayhawk teams have compiled an impressive collection of trophies since 1947. The Kansans have not lost a dual meet in two years, have won two straight Big Seven indoor titles, captured the conference outdoor meet in 1952, and have copped numerous individual titles in the nation's top track and field events.
Before he finishes his college career, Wes Santee may become the greatest distance runner ever coached by Easton. Santee has been shattering team and conference records by the score in the past two years and at present ranks high among the nation's top distance runners. He participated in the 1952 Olympic games in Helsinki and has coped several titles in the KU, Texas, and Drake Relavs.
Another Kansas great, Herb Semper, won two national titles, the National Junior AAU 5,000-meter and the NCAA cross-country run, by the time he was a junior. He held the Big Seven record for both the indoor and outdoor 2-mile also.
Easton is a strict disciplinarian who orders plenty of ordinary run-run-run for his distance aces.
Four-Milers Cast Covetous Glances At National Record Michigan Holds
Heartened considerably by that unexpected 17.14.0 burst at the Texas Relays, Kansas' four mile team already has placed Michigan's National record squarely in its sights for the 28th Kansas Relays tomorrow.
Kansas has won four consecutive major relay titles at this distance. This year's Jayhawker foursome of Dick Wilson, Lloyd Koby, Art Dellzell, and Wes Santee feel they can run close to 17:00. Anything under 17:08.6 would snap Michigan's current standard, which a Wolvrine unit of Aaron Gordon, John Moule, John Ross, and Don McEwen established in a triangular meet at Ypsilanti last May.
There is more than meets the eye in Kansas' desire to own that four-mile standard. Last year at Drake a Jawhayker quartet of Koby, Dalzell, Herb Semper, and Santee, smashed a 14-year-old National College and American record with a 17:15.9 performance. Two weeks later, Michigan, which did not compete in that race at Des Moines, wrecked the effort at Ypsilanti.
The Kansers would like something more than a two week ownership of a record which stickout teams had been aiming at since 1937.
Wilson, a junior from Albany N.Y., opened in 4:21.8 at Austin. He and his mates figure that he can get down to 4:18.0. Dalzell run 4:19.5, but owns a figure as low at 4:18.0.
The Ypsilanti record still is pending acceptance as an American mark. So is KU's tour at Drake. The Jayhawkers wrote a new Texas Relays mark this year which ranks as the second fastest time ever unfurled by an American team.
KU has its 17:44.0 at Texas with Santee uncreeping the swiftest mile of his career, an anchoring 4:06.6. The unit, therefore, scarcely can hope for better cleanup time in its bid for a new national mark. Improvement then, must be forthcoming from the first three legs.
Meanwhile that old 17:36l effort set by an Indiana unit of Mell Truitt, Jim Smith, Tom Deckard, and Don Lesh, still is on the American books, although erased from National Collegiate listing.
ART DALZELL
Koby finished at 4:26.1. Providing Santee can unwrap another mile
FRANK CINDRICH
under 4:07:0. the Jayhawks, with these times, would hit 17:00. The stuffed problem, of course, will be getting maximum individual performances together on the same day.
With Oklahoma and Iowa available for this event, and Oklahoma A&M and Kansas State expected to renew their Texas challenges, not only the Kansas record will be under fire, but the freshly-constructed world mark as well.
On the basis of the Austin show, there'll be some other baton marks in danger. KU's quartet of Don Smith, Frank Cindrich, Dick McGlinn, and Santee boomed to a new 321.5. This is 80.2 below Oklahoma's existing Mt. Oread mark of 324.3, existed in 1950.
The Jayhawks also ran 7:41.8 in
Wes Santee's anchoring 4:06.6 mile for KU's record-shattering four-mile team at the Texas RELays was his fifth under 4:10. He pumped unofficial efforts of 4:06.8 and 4:07.2 in baton carries at Drake last year. He set a KU-Kansas State Outdoor dual record of 4:06.3 last May in Manhattan and a Big Seven indoor figure of 4:08.3 less than two months ago in Kansas City.
Santee Runs Five Fast Miles
the two-mile at Austin to grab halfshare of the meet record. That is only eight-tenths above the Oklahoma A&M time established in 1949, Iowa, if it gets Rich Ferguson back in harness, will be a severe contender in this race as will the Oklahoma Aggies.
5 Olympians to Vie In Track Carnival
Five 1952 Olympic teamers, three from the Big Seven ranks, will go after added 1953 glory here tomorrow in the 28th Kansas Relays.
This roster includes Darrow Hooper, Texas A&M's towering weight-caster; Arnold Betton, Drake high jumper; and the Big Seven trio of Thane Baker, Kansas State. Wes Holmes, Oklahoma. The latter represented his native land, South Africa, in the world games in Helsinki.
Baker trailed home only Seton Hall's Andy Stanfield in another 1-2-3 American finish. The rocketing Wildcat was clocked in .208 around the one curve, good enough to win almost any other furlong match in history. Stanfield was caught in .207.
Hoooper and Baker erected the highest standard for this group with runner-up finishes in the shot pot and 200 meters, respectively. Hoooper was beaten less than inch by his arch foe, USC's Parry O'Brien, $57 - \frac{1}{4}$,$57^{\frac{3}{4}}$, after winning by almost the same fraction in the final U.S. trials.
Save for ineligibility on scholastic counts, this coterie would number seven. Both Oklahoma's J. W. Mashburn, terrify young quarter军, and Dean Smith, Texas spinner, were members of Uncle Sam's forces last year but tripped in the classroom in mid-year. Smith ran fourth in the Helsinki 100 meters. Mashburn was the No. 4 quarter-miler but was not used until the post-games tour.
Neither Betton nor Price finished in the money. The angular Drake junior made the team behind Buddy Davis and Ken Wiesner with a jump of 6-6' in the final trials. He was seventh at Helsinki at 6-4.
Price ranked third after the qualifying rounds with a leap of 24-14. But he slid to 11th in the finals—qualifying jumps do not carry over into the finals under Olympic rules—at 21.0.
Santee did not qualify in the 5,000 time of the year for that disquali-
Unfortunately, no members of this Olympic quintet will be brought together face-to-face here. Nearest will be Baker and Santee in the sprint medley relay. Even then they'll be on opposite ends of rival quartets. At Texas two weeks ago, it took a 1:49.7 anchoring half from
the Jayhawk junior to erase a lead which Baker had established for the Wildcats with a :47.4 opening quarter.
On the strength of Santee's cleanup, the Jayhawkers hustled to a new world record of 3:21.8, a figure since challenged because of a miss-staggering of the No. 3 runners.
Santee and Hooper also are NCAA champions, two of the three which will show here, Gordon Riddell,ado A&M pole vaulter, is the third.
Santee galloped to a new meet record of 14:36.3 in the 5,000 meters last June in Berkeley and followed a week later by adding the NAAU meters crown as well. He was runner-up to the veteran Curtis Stone in the 5,000 final trials, but ran the swiftest time any Big Seven competitor ever unfurled for this distance. 14:32.0, nonetheless.
Like Hooper, Baker can cement a triple crown by successful defense of his 100-vard dash championship. He must beat the same field he whipped at Texas, including Paul Wells, Oklahoma A&M; Kirby Jett, Houston; and Charles Thomas, Texas, plus Pittsburg Teachers' new sensation, Gene Buie.
Riddell tied with four other contenders at 13-9 for his championship, then missed the Olympic trip by three lengths on a sixth place tie in the final. He defended the Rolls title he shared last year with Paul Faulkner at 12-6.
Santee is scheduled to anchor at least two relay teams and possibly a third here in combinations involving the distance medley, four-mile, two-mile and sprint-medley. Although the sprint-medley pions in both the longer races, they would like to put that sprint medley world mark beyond question.
Hooper won his national collegiate gold medal two years ago as a sophomore, beating O'Brien with a cast of 53-11.
Betton is defending champion in the high jump. He'll be pressed by East Texas State's Chuck Holding, who has been over 6-7 twice this spring.