University Daily Kansan / Friday, April 17, 1987
9
Kansas Relays
Mills found acceptance in world of sports
Bv ROB KNAPP
Staff writer
The film projected on the wall shows Billy Mills, 26. less than two years out of KU and wearing a U.S. uniform, nearing the end the 10,000-meter run at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. He trails two runners.
Billy Mills, 1964 Olympic champion in the 10.000-meter run, is pictured during his days at Kansas. The Kansas Belays' 10.000-meter run, named in his honor, begins at 8:27 a.m. today at Memorial Stadium.
Suddenly, with less than 100 yards to go, Mills speeds up. He is passing world record-holder Ron Clarke of Australia and Mohamed Gammoud of Tunisia. Announcer Jim McKay has only enough time to yell, "Here comes Mills! Here comes Mills!" as Mills bursts past his competition and crosses the finish line in 28 minutes, 24.4 seconds, an Olympic record.
Billy Mills, 49, and wearing a subdued plaid suit, sits at the head table with hands folded, watching the film clip for the thousandth, maybe the millionth time. As the audience at the Kansas Press, Mills of Kano claps enthusiastically, Mills rises to give his speech.
He is no longer distance-runner thin. He has remained in good shape, though, but by running shorter distances. His only connection with the 10,000 meters now is that the race at the Kansas Relays, which begins at 8:27 a.m. today at Memorial Stadium, bears his name.
Mills does not approach the rostrum as an underdog. He is in his element. He takes the microphone from its stand on the podium and moves to a platform beside the head table.
There, the audience can see him move to the rhythm of his words, bending his knees slightly to emphasize a point. His hand, free from the burden of notes, clinches into a fist, then relaxes. He waves his arm upward. This is a broad landscape of his native South Dakota was again before him.
He speaks of dealing with change and making commitment, but everything sooner or later relates back to track
"I enjoy being on the platform and telling stories," Mills said later. "Having people hear the highs and lows of your own emotions causes them to start dealing with their own feelings."
Mills, who lives with his wife and three daughters in Fair Oaks, Calif., makes the trip to the speaker's platform about 60 times a year. He receives about 500 requests a year, all handled through a company called the Harris Agency, operated by his wife, Pat.
The speaking engagements are only a portion of Billy Mills Enterprises, the umbrella company under which all of Mills' ventures fall. He is a successful insurance agent. He also has a program called Running Strong, which raises money for Indian youth programs.
Mills, a half-blood Sioux, is quick with a smile, but he takes on a serious cast when he talks about the struggle for Indian rights.
that have two sets of rights," he said.
"As an American, I have rights, plus I have the rights retained for me by my ancestors in treaties with this country. It's the second set of rights that have been ignored."
Life at Haskell
"Indians are the only Americans
Mills was one of 15 children. His parents were divorced early in his life. His father, whom he called the "Little Man," was the last person to live. died when Mills was 12 years old.
"He died before I realized he was human," Mills said. "I couldn't see his weaknesses, I only knew him as my father."
But Mills still had a family in his brothers and sisters.
Indians saw me as a half-blood, and the white world saw me as an Indian. I found a third culture, and that culture was sport.'
Billy Mills former KU track star
"My brothers and sisters were my support system," Mills said. "They gave me my social direction."
"They helped me deal with living in society and the free enterprise system. They helped me in dealing with being a minority in society."
Mills went to Haskell Indian School in 1954. Haskell, at that time, was a high school, taking in Indian youths from all over the country. It was first time Mills lived away from the reservation.
"We were high school freshmen through seniors, in the charge of the school, far away from our homes. I loved it."
Mills ran competitively at Haskell under Coach Tony Coffin. Coffin, a KU graduate, was impressed with Mills and told his friend, Kansas track coach Bill Easton, to come out and take a look.
Easton attended Haskell football games, where Mills ran in races held at halftime, and knew immediately that Mills was a special talent.
"You had the sense about something special when you'd first see him run," Easton said. "You could see it was there."
After four happy years at Haskell,
Mills enrolled at the University of
Kansas in the fall of 1958.
"It was my first exposure to white society." Mills said. "When I left Haskell it was breaking away from the culture I had always known."
Tough times at KU
Billy Mills left his mark on Kansas athletics, more in cross country than in track. He was named a cross
country All-American in 1958 and 1959 and was the Big Eight Conference cross country champion in 1960. He was a member of Kansas' and 1960 NCAA championship track teams.
Off the track, Mills was trying to find a place for himself in a university community that was only beginning to adjust to the presence of minorities.
"KU almost broke me," Mills said.
"Life at KU was tough in many,"
"most places."
He said he encountered resistance when he considered joining a fraternity. Some fraternities did not allow minorities at the time. In all cases, the cultural barriers between Mills and his adopted society were proving to be formidable.
Mills, who had been a half-breed to those of the Indian world, was now looked on as an Indian by white society.
"While the others' hero might be the chairman of the board of some large company, my hero was Crazy Horse," Mills said. "They would look at me and say, 'Who's Crazy Horse?'"
Easton remembered Mills as being very shy in his early days at KU.
"But you've got to remember, Billy had had no affiliations with white people up to that time as a rule." Easton said.
And although Mills gradually grew more comfortable at Kansas, he cannot forget the incidents of discrimination that marked the times.
He recalled a trip to the barber shop with some teammates, including the late Charlie Tidwell. Mills invited Tidwell, who was black, into the barber shop, but Tidwell insisted on going elsewhere to get his assist when he was inside the shop did Mills warn that it did not serve blacks.
Mills the Olympian
Mills began training in earnest for the 1964 Olympics while he was at Ku
"I did what I did not to win, but to get a better perspective of who I am," Mills said.
"Indians saw me as a half-blood, and the white world saw me as an Indian. I found a third culture, and that culture was sport."
He began to consider the Olympics when he was still a sophomore at Haskell. But at KU, he said he often fallen apart by the end of the cross country season and didn't perform as well in track events.
He discovered that he had food allergies and made a change in his diet. In the day when the standard meal for an athlete was a steak and a baked potato, Mills replaced much of the meat in his diet with a protein supplement and began eating more fruit.
Mills kept a training notebook, and two years before the Olympics, he made an entry that said, "Gold medal—10,000 meters."
A year later. one year before
Tokyo, Mills wrote in his notebook,
"Qualify for two events—10,000 and
5,000 or marathon."
At the Olympic trials in 1964, Mills qualified for the 10,000-meter run and the marathon. It was his second race over 10,000 meters and his first marathon.
In Tokyo, the press ignored Mills and concentrated on the favorites in Japan.
"I thought I was going to win," Mills said. "I didn't say, 'Billy, you're going to win,' but I was confident."
In 1965, Mills set his only world record, a 27 minute, 11.1 second-place finish in the six-mile run.
two years of not competing, he rushed into training for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and finished fourth in the 10,000 meters at the Olympic trials. A third place finish would have earned him a spot on the U.S. team.
Mills gave up the international track circuit later that year. After
Mills still regrets his decision to leave track when he was only 27.
"If I had kept running," Mills said, "I would have gone down in history as being one of the great distance runners.
"I feel like I am, but I'm not."
Mills' running days are over now. He reinforced his right knee this past winter while skiing, and doctors had to remove cartilage from his knee
He has taken up golf as a substitute, but after years of training, the
habit is tough to shake
"Knowing I can't run hard again, that's hard to take." Mills said.
As neither a full-blood member of the white or the Indian world, Milla said winning the Olympic gold medal for soccer made it easier to coexist peacefully in his life.
"I am learning to walk in two
wheels with one spirit," he is fond of
himself.
But his own identity, the one he fought and trained so long to discover, may still be a bit of a mystery to him.
"Society really still doesn't know me," Mills said. "Not that they show. But very few people still believe that they're all that's ever really wanted to be."
Peder Bengtsson, Wichita State, watches his competitors high jump during the men's decathlon. Bengtsson tied for sixth place in the event Wednesday in Anschutz Sports Pavilion with a jump of 6 feet.
Former KU field event stars to be honored
Daryl Chang/KANSAN
By DIANE FILIPOWSKI
Staff writer
five former Kansas track stars
paid their dues at McCook Field on
Monday.
Those five athletes, who threw the discus, shot put and javelin, will be honored tonight when they officially be dug into the KU Sports Hall of Fame.
The throwing field just outside of Memorial Stadium, where they spent much of their careers practicing, will be renamed McCook-Impaley Field
in their honor
The three who will attend the banquet, Oerter, Nieder and Alley, will receive replicas of their pictures, for the KU Hall of Fame in Allen Field House.
Al Oerter, Bill Nieder, Bill Alley,
the late Terry Becher and Sam
Colson are the five inductees, who
will be honored at a banquet at 7 p.m.
at the Holiday Inn Holdioe, 200
McDonald Drive.
Arl Orefesetian, Kansas Relief
manager, said since McCollore Field,
Kansas State.
throwing events since 1923, was rebuilt two years ago, this year's Relays was the perfect opportunity to rename the field.
"There isn't another team in the country that has had five Olympic competitors in throwing events," Fereshetian said. "We thought it was a good way to honor and remember them."
In honor of these Olympians, the discus ring will be named Al Oerter Discus Ring and the shot put ring will
See FIELD EVENTS, p. 16, col. 1
Women's role in KU Relays has increased over 24 years
Rv DAVID ROYCF
Staff writer
Wednesday marked the opening of the 62nd Annual Kansas Relays, but for women athletes, this will be only their 24th year of participation.
Not until 1963 did women participate in the Relays. And even then, only 15 participated in two of the 440-yard dash and a 440-yard relay.
Even though the women participated in these two events, official times and places were not recorded until 1969.
By 1969, the official Relays record book had a time for the 800-yard run. An unattached runner named Barbara Lawson won with a time of 2:20.7.
The first time the Relays' record book acknowledged the women's 100-yard dash was 1973, and the women's 100-meter race was women's 100-vard intramural race.
At this time, the Kansas women's track program was just starting. Newly appointed women's basketball coach Marian Washington started the program when she came to Kansas in 1972 to get her master's degree in health and physical education.
Before Washington came to KU, she practiced with AI Oerter in New York on discuss throwing, an activity she did along with coaching basketball.
"When I came here I was looking for someone to throw discus and Bill Easton was here," Washington said.
Easton then was the men's discus coach.
Washington said she noticed there was not a women's track program and so she requested permission to start one.
"I worked with Bob Timmons very hard to bring the two programs together," Washington said.
Each year events have been gradually added for women'
Carla Coffey women's track coach
Washington stayed with the program until 1974 when she gave it up to concentrate on coaching basketball.
the next year, 1975, the Relays added seven events for women. Timmons coached both the men's and women's team that year.
Coffey, who has coached women's track longer than any
Each year events have been gradually added for women." Carla Coffey, women's track coach, said.
By 1977, Kansas, coached by Tom Lionvale, fielded a KU team of 19 members and competed against 24 other teams.
In 1973, only three colleges had women's teams at the RELAws, and 18 women participated. But in 1975, eight colleges competed, and Kansas alone had 10 women entered in events.
"Women's tradition is growing. Tradition began with Oerter and Rvun." she said.
previous coach at Kansas, is in her seventh year.
In 1975, Sheila Sullentrop won the high jump at 4-feet-10. Last year, Kansas State's Rita Graves scored a career-high with a leap of 6-4. A Relais record.
For Kansas women, only one person owns a Relay record. Halcyon McNight holds the Relays record in the long jump with a leap of 30.4 feet.
This year's RELays include a woman Olympic gold medalist, Nawal El Moutawakel, from Jordan. The 400-meter intermediate hurdles
"We haven't had any Olympians from Kansas," Coffey said, "but we have had 12 or so All-Americans, which is pretty good starting ground for a young program."
The number of women competing from 1963 to 1974 averaged 15 athletes per year. This year, the women will compete in 19 events.
And Kansas' program also has progressed since 1972.
"We didn't have much of anything," Washington said. "There was no recruiting, and most of our equipment we received was from the health and physical education department.
"Anytime you can be involved with a program and you can see improvement and growth, the feeling is good. I think Carla's longevity here has really helped the program."