Securing Wyoming’s track and field champions has been an arduous task, but we’re almost there.
Of the 8,274 individual and relay champions in state history, we’ve located 8,272.
Do the math: We’re missing two. Just two. We have 99.9758% of all the champions in state history.
But those last two… the completionist in me really wants to find them.
In short, both “Stat Rat” Jim Craig and I have exhausted all of our resources. We’ve looked up and down every available newspaper and yearbook we can get our eyes on. Time and again, we’ve come up with nothing.
This post is my best attempt at logic-ing our way to finding the last two we haven’t yet found.
The good news? Both missing champions are from 1969, so there’s a good chance both of our missing champions are still alive, or someone is alive who knows who was the champ.
So I’m asking you, dear reader, to help us find the 1969 Class B boys long jump champion and the 1969 Class C boys discus champion — the 0.0242% of champions we don’t have yet.
Here are my best guesses as to who MIGHT have won those titles.
1969 Class B boys long jump: My best guess is Byron’s Dan Williamson. Williamson won the Class B triple jump and set a new state record in the process and also won the 120-yard hurdles. He also long jumped in the Meet of Champions after the state meet with a personal best of 21 feet even, the best among all Class B or Class C long jumpers. Other teams that could have had the champion include Upton, Cowley, Shoshoni, Cokeville, Lingle, Morton, Guernsey-Sunrise and Mountain View. Who it’s NOT is Burlington’s Larry Johnson, who won the regional meet long jump championship over Williamson the week before state; it can’t be Johnson because Burlington didn’t rack up enough team points at state to have had even one individual champion. It’s also NOT Joe Phipps from Glenrock, who also won his regional meet but was not listed among Glenrock’s individual track champs in the Herders’ yearbook. It’s also NOT Williamson’s Byron teammate Rick Tanner, who won the high jump, pole vault, shot put and 110 hurdles (let’s see someone try to pull THAT four-event sweep off in 2024), but had his individual titles stop there. Similarly, it also was NOT Upton’s Jim Mosley, who won the 100, 220 and 440 but won no other individual titles.
1969 Class C boys discus: My best guess is Arvada’s Les (Leslie) Drake. Drake won the discus title at the Class C North regional meet and also won the shot put at state. But he’s not listed in his own school’s yearbook as any kind of champion, which is kind of weird. Other teams that could have had the champion include LaGrange, Deaver, Manderson, Rock River, Carpenter, Ten Sleep and Medicine Bow. Of that group, Carpenter’s Ed Poelma had the best chance of challenging Drake, but his regionals mark was 10 feet short of Drake’s regionals mark.
So, if you know someone who knows Dan Williamson from Byron, or Leslie Drake from Arvada… or you know someone who does… can you give ’em a call on my behalf? Ask them if they won these events 55 or so years ago? Let us know what they say?
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We’re also still missing two first names — a Sims from Mountain View who won the Class B boys high jump championship in 1961, and a Jurich from Reliance who won the Class B discus and shot put championships in 1935.
As for times and marks, we’re still missing a few of those, too:
- The winning mark for Class B shot put champion Rick Tanner from Byron in 1969 (can you tell the newspaper coverage of the 1969 state track and field meet was awful?)
- The winning time for Lyman’s Class B 880 relay team in 1951
- The winning time for Natrona’s all-class 880 relay team in 1936
- The winning time for Worland’s Carl Dir in the all-class 100 in 1927
- The winning time for Thermopolis’ all-class mile medley relay team in 1927
And that’s it. Of those 8,274 individual and relay champions, we have full names and marks for 8,263 of them. That’s 99.87%. That’s not bad. But it’s soooo annoyingly close to 100%.
Maybe with your help, we could get there.
–patrick