From: Edward  J. Grant <[email protected]>

To: Net Athletics 

Subject: t-and-f: 50 Years Ago in Bloomfield

Date: Monday, June 29, 1998 10:01 PM



Netters:

        This past  weekend marked the 50th anniversary of probably the

best-known track and field event ever to take place in New Jersey,

certainly the only one celebrated in a motion picture. (One episode of the

late, lamented Meadowlands Invitational did serve as the centerpiece for a

segment of The Cosby Show on TV, but that was hardly the same thing.)



        In 1948, the Olympic Trials and National AAU decathlon were held

jointly at what is now Foley Field, Bloomfield, an Essex County community

which had served as host for several years to the AAU championships for the

event during and just after World War II. Those meets were held at nearby

Brookdale Park, but it was deemed fitting to move the 1948 meet to the

stadium, which was mainly known as the home field of one of NJ's HS

football powers of the era. Another change was that the decathlon was held

before, rather than after the AAU Championships (July 2-3 at Marquette

Stadium, Milwaukee) and, of course, before the final Olympic Trials, a week

after that in Dyche Stadium at Northwestern University). The first three

finishers at the Bloomfield meet thus became among the first to qualify for

the 1948 trial and the first in a single trial---marathoners were chosen in

a different way at that time.



        The favorite going into the decathlon was Irv (Moon) Mondschein, an

N.Y.U. graduate who had won the event in 1944, 1946 and 1947, the latter

with 6,715 points. William Watson, who probably would have been the Olympic

champion in 1940 (he scored 7,523 points in the AAU championship that year)

and maybe again in 1944 (he also won the AAU title in 1943) was by now

retired. But there were new challengers, as always happens in an Olympic

year: North Carolina U. grad Floyd Simmons and a HS phenom out of Tulare,

Calif., Bob Mathias. 



        John Voight, a pentathlon (200-1500-LJ-DT-JT) specialist from the

Baltimore OC, took the early lead with a leading 10.8 in the 100M and a

2nd-place 23-1 15/16 (yes that was the measurement, as translated from

meters) in the LJ, but Mondschein was close on his heels. Irv moved ahead

in the SP, won the HJ at 6-5 15/16 (there it is again!) and finished with a

3rd-place 50.9 in the 400. He seemed pretty safe after the first day with

4,187 points to 3,885 for Simmons and 3,833 for Mathias.



        But the first event of the 2nd day changed things radically.

Mathias ran 15.1 and Simmons 15.5 in the HH, with Moon out of the top 10 in

the event. Mathias, one-half of great HS doiscus duo with future Olympic

champ Sim Iness placed 2nd in that event at 139-7 3/16 and Simmons was 3rd

at 135-1 3/8. The two were now 1-2 with Mathias now  leading, 5,534-5,480.



        Then, disaster struck in the form of a torrential storm as the

athletes were warming up for the PV. Everyone--athletes, coaches, officials

and fans (not too many of them) huddled under the stands waiting for it to

stop and realizing that the narrow clay runway would be turned into a

hopeless sea of mud. The question was even raised as to whether the event

could be extended to three days.



        Eventually, the rain stopped and the athletes solved the approach

problems by running down the grass alongside the runway. The result was

that four tied at 11-6 3/6, among them Mathias---thus protecting his

lead---and a lanky athlete from Oklahoma named Billy S. Weaver (of whom

more later). In the ensuing javelin, the wet grass runway also curtailed

marks. Mathias threw 157-3 3/8 and Simmon 156-8 11/16, so Bob had a

122-point  lead entering the gruelling 1500.



        Weaver won that race in 4:34.8 to clinch 6th place and he was

followed by Wilbur Ross, another pentathlon specialist who would gain his

track and field fame as a coach in later years. Mondschein was 3rd, passing

Simmons for the silver medal, but Mathias had no trouble holding on to his

lead as he finished in 4:55.2. The final scores were 7,224 for Mathias,

7,101 for Mondschein and 7,054 for Simmons. These were the 1934 tables,

first used for Olympic competition at Berlin in 1936 when Glenn Morris set

the WR of 7,900, still the record in 1948.



        When "The Bob Mathias Story" was made, it was naturally shot at a

California stadium which was plentifully filled with spectators, increased

perhaps a hundred fold from the friends, relatives and track nuts who watch

the Bloomfield meet. Mathias was the only one to play himself, though two

others in the top six had later movie/TV careers. Simmons appaeared as a

Navy officer in "South Pacific," among other films. But it was the

6th-place Weaver who cut the greatest swath in the entertainment business.

He dropped the "Billy" and used his middle name instead. You see, the D.

stood for Dennis.



        Of course, most of us who know him so well figure the best actor of

the lot would have been Moon Mondschein, still very much a force in the

sport as an advisory coach to his son Brian at Kutztown University and

also, I believe, helping out at LaSalle.



        That weekend provided Bloomfield with its two days in the track and

field sun. It is a town which had a long history in the sport as the

birthplace of such past Olympians as Mike Devaney (gold medalist as a

member of the US steeplechase team in 1920 and later coach of the Millrose

AA) and Johnny Gibson, 1928 Olympian in the IH, an official at that 1948

meet and still very much with us at 94. (He only retired from officiating a

couple of years ago.).



                                        Ed Grant 





         



        Most of the Brookdale meets had assembled the usual cast of

charcters found at non-Olympic year decathlons