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Nike Outdoor Nationals
June 18-20, 2009 at Greensboro NC
DyeStat on-site
Preview: Boys 4x1 Mile
By Dave Devine


Could this be the year South Eugene's record falls?
Squads from top NXN teams provide stiff challenge to 33 year-old 4x1 Mile record

By Dave Devine, DyeStat senior editor



courtesy John Gustafson
It is a blustery, overcast day in early May, 1976.  Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford are locked in a contentious primary battle for the Republican nomination.  Mary Tyler Moore is the top-rated show on television, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are investigating Watergate on the big screen in All the President’s Men, and Peter Frampton is on the cover of Rolling Stone.  Bell bottoms and leisure suits are all the rage.  Queen and KISS and Paul McCartney’s Wings are all over the radio.  And in the quiet college town of Eugene, Oregon, four shaggy-haired teenagers gather on a rubberized asphalt track for a relay race.

Talented milers in a high school—and a town—that reveres distance running, seniors Chris Nielsen and John Gustafson, along with juniors Bill McChesney and Dirk Lakeman, are hoping to break a national record. In order to do so, they first need to break their own South Eugene High School record.  The previous spring, Nielsen, Gustafson, McChesney and McChesney’s now-graduated older brother, Steven, had taken down the national 4x1 Mile mark set by Essex Catholic of New Jersey in 1966, slicing less than a second from the Marty Liquori-anchored squad’s 17:12.2 with their own 17:11.7 clocking.  Now, with the recently-transferred Lakeman stepping into Steven McChesney’s vacated slot, and a year of additional maturity for the other three, the feeling—despite the weather and a dearth of competition—is that the record can be pushed well south of 17 minutes. 

Coach Harry Johnson has encouraged them to “put it out of reach.”

Through sixteen largely solo laps, the relay team obliges, setting a new national record of 17:06.6 with splits of 4:16.9 (Lakeman), 4:19.7 (Nielsen), 4:11.8 (McChesney), and 4:18.2 (Gustafson), knocking five more seconds from the 1975 mark while Steven McChesney watches with a mix of emotion from the sidelines.  Their collective PRs in the mile, when added up on paper, suggested something close to 16:40 was possible.  Running 17:06 with that kind of talent is rewarding, but fails to leave them completely satisfied.  It works out to just over 4:16 per man. Surely there was more in the tank, but given the weather, the time of year, the lonely nature of the record assault, it stands as a good effort.

Thirty-three years later, good has become great

Ronald Reagan has served two terms as President and passed away.  Mary Tyler Moore can be found on late-night cable reruns.  Queen and KISS and McCartney are relegated to classic rock radio stations.  Bell bottoms have gone and come and gone away again.  But that national record, authored by four shaggy-haired teenagers on a blustery May afternoon in 1976, remains the best 4x1 Mile relay ever run by a high school team.

This coming Saturday, at the 2009 Nike Outdoor Nationals, a handful of relay squads fronted by defending NON 4xMile champs The Woodlands TX and Nike Cross National champions North Central WA, all riding a distance-running renaissance not seen since the late 1970’s, will try to topple that mark. 

But as John Gustafson, the anchor on that 1976 team succinctly notes , “It’s a hard thing to do.”

Putting it out of reach

“We all thought we could run 4:15 or better that day,” Gustafson recalled by phone this week, “but by yourself—that’s a lot harder than I thought.  And we didn’t catch the best day, either.  It was cloudy and windy and threatening to rain.”

Gustafson, who has a son who's now a sophomore at South Eugene, recalls the high hopes his team had heading into the meet.  “If you put our four PR’s together—I had run 4:08, Billy had run 4:10, Nielsen had run 4:12, and Lakeman had run 4:10 or something—you put that together and we’re in the 16:40’s, I think.  We were thinking even if we didn’t run our best we could still get 17-flat.  Having everybody sharp on the same day is hard.”

The coach of that South Eugene team, Harry Johnson, is now retired and living in Bend, Oregon.  He, too, remembers that the celebration was tempered by unmet expectations.


Meet program from the day the 4xMile record was set. Courtesy John Gustafson
“The guys from ’76 were kind of bummed out,” Johnson said this week, “because what they were trying to do was break 17. And we had the individual marks to do it.  We didn’t have a fabulous day to do it, but those guys were really after that sub-17 mark.”
 
The former coach points out that the effort came at his high school’s annual relay meet, a small affair which brought in strong teams but offered no serious competition for his talented harriers.

“It was a regular deal, it wasn’t any kind of concocted deal to go after a record or anything like that.  We just never had anyone to run against. ”

But when the gun went off, the record pursuit was on.

“The guys would get so jacked up for it,” Johnson says. “That first lap was always 60.5 or 61, or something crazy like that.  But they were all fit enough that they could handle coming off a quick pace like that.”

Steven McChesney, only a year removed from his own record-setting days at South Eugene, watched with a mix of pride and disappointment as the laps fell away and his year-old national record fell into jeopardy.

“I was there with very mixed feelings,” McChesney recalled in a recent email. “Part of me wanted the ‘76 boys to shatter the record, and a little part of me hoped that our record could remain with me and my brother.  I knew in advance of the 17:06 that they had the talent to go under 17:00.  But I also knew that our PRs the year prior had been much faster than the 17:11 that we ended up with…I remember with each split I got more excited for them and a bit sad that my record team would go down.  But in the end we were all were very excited.  We had no idea that the record would last that long.”

Harry Johnson, who left coaching after 16 years at South Eugene to take a job with Nike in 1977, admits he had no idea either.

“I am little bit surprised, but we had a tremendous program going; kids bought off on it.  Track was the premier sport at a really good high school.”

Gustafson, who went on to run at Indiana for legendary coach Sam Bell, has no trouble recalling Coach Johnson’s admonition that day at the Axemen Relays.

“I remember Harry saying, ‘We want to put it out of reach.’  Well, I guess ‘out of reach’ is thirty-three years.”

The latest challengers


  Reed Connor hands off to Drew Butler at the Texas Relays.
  Photo by Bert Richardson
Reed Connor, two years older than John Gustafson’s son, knows something about having to topple a school record en route to a national mark.  He’s a senior at The Woodlands High School in Texas, and a member of one of the best distance groups to pass through the school since a certain 1986 team that ran what is considered the second fastest 16-lap relay in high school history.  Then known as McCullough High School, that year’s team saw Danny Green (4:22.5), Scott Cramer (4:18.9), Shawn Barnes (4:14.7) and Eric Henry (4:08.6) clock a 17:04.7 4x1600 relay, which converts to 17.10.7 for the 4x1 Mile distance.  The converted mark trails only South Eugene’s 1976 record on the all-time list.

At this weekend’s Nike Outdoor Nationals, Connor and senior teammate Drew Butler will lead The Woodlands in an effort to defend their 2008 4x1 Mile title, and perhaps push for a time under 17:10. They currently lead the nation in the 4x1600 with a 17:26.42 from the Texas Relays.

“We’ve been thinking about that one all year, actually,” Connor acknowledges. “Some of the people on that team have called us—Eric Henry, I’ve talked to him—and he’s coming down to watch the meet.  The whole year we’ve been thinking that we have the potential to get the school record, but it hasn’t happened yet.  We haven’t been close, really.  We haven’t had the weather, and we haven’t put the guys together, and we haven’t had the effort, obviously.”

Connor and Butler both sport mile PR’s near 4:10, and they’ll be joined by juniors Thomas Sanderson and Ross Moulder.  Sanderson has run 4:19 for 1600 meters, while Connor figures Moulder has a PR near 4:23.  But, says Connor, “We think both those guys can drop some time off their PR’s.  They’ve been doing some great training.”

Connor knows there’s a reason the 17:06.6 mark has stood the test of time.

“It doesn’t sound too bad whenever you hear it, but then you look at the record, and it’s from ’76, so long ago that obviously there’s some difficulty in just having the four guys run decent all on that one day.  It’s tough.”  He thinks there’s a chance a record could fall—the school record or the national record—but he also knows his squad can’t do it alone. “Just based off our times, the record is a possibility.  And it will help to have North Central [Washington], with times that indicate a faster overall time than us, so we’ll have some people to race and push us, and we’ll be able to push them as well.”

NXN rematch of sorts

North Central, winner of last fall’s NXN Championship, and more recently the Washington 3A state track title (in which they placed 2-3-4 in the 1600), has been eyeing an attempt at the national 4x1 Mile record for two years, ever since the 2007 3A Eastern Regional, when North Central swept the top four places in the 1600m with two sophomores, a junior and a freshman all running 4:21. 

Leon Dean was one of those sophomores. A senior now, he sees the coming Nike Outdoor meet as a chance to bring the promise of that two year-old race to fruition.


  North Central milers Andrew Kimpel and Ben Johnston.
  Photo by Robert Rosenberg
“It’s kind of rare to have four guys do that, and we were like, ‘Whoa, we have four guys returning at that time.’”  Without an opportunity to compete in a 4x1 Mile relay in 2008, he’s hoping they can make the most of their one chance in 2009. “Nationals is the place to do it, I guess… We’re pretty confident that in the right atmosphere, with the competition, we’ll be able to bring it.”

North Central’s lineup features junior Ben Johnston at 4:13 for 1600 (who was not part of the 2007 quartet), seniors Andrew Kimpel and Dean at 4:14, and junior Alex Avila, who still sports the 4:21 PR he ran as a freshman in that Eastern Regional race, but has ripped a 1:54.37 800 this spring.

Dean's team is as aware of The Woodlands as Connor and company are of the challengers from Washington.  “They were at NXN, obviously, and Reed Connor won, so we know he’s pretty legit.  And then with Drew Butler—they have two pretty solid legs.  We know they’ll probably be the best team there in addition to us.”

In fact, four of the top six teams from last December’s NXN championship race are entered near the top of the field in Saturday’s 4x1 Mile showdown.  North Central WA, The Woodlands TX, York IL and Don Bosco NJ are all expected to toe the line for the 8am start.  One notable absence is NXN sixth-place squad and indoor 4x1 Mile national record-setters West Windsor Plainsboro North NJ.  With one of their team members committed to a Friday night graduation ceremony, the team will only pursue the Distance Medley Relay and individual events on Saturday.  Another serious contender in the race is North Central's Washington 3A rival Seattle Prep, which has four runners under 4:19 for 1600 meters.

For Connor and his Woodlands teammates, also slated to run the DMR, the decision to pursue relay gold over individual laurels was made easy by the depth of competition in the baton events.

“This year the relays are loaded,” he says. “There are all these great teams, and great times, and that seems exciting that we could be a part of history in these distance relays if we run them right.  That’s why we decided to run the relays instead of individual events.”

Gustafson, South Eugene's anchor all those years ago, thinks there’s a possibility Connor, Dean and their respective teams could make their mark on the all-time lists.

“If you’ve got two teams with four guys all around 4:15, that’s the ideal situation.  They might have a shot, because it’s not just you and the clock.”

And Gustafson knows a thing or two about being part of track history.

“Every year,” he says, “when Track & Field News comes out with their High School Rankings edition, I scan through there wondering, ‘Did we make it?  Are we still on there?’”

They are for now.




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