Track and field, long a Southern California stronghold in San Diego, celebrated some powerful performances.
Lincoln lost only a late-season, nonleague dual meet at Helix, 57-47, won its third straight Eastern League dual meet championship and the San Diego Section title for the second year in a row, and contended for the state team championship.
The Hornets’ Vernus Ragsdale and James Kennedy, and Hoover’s John Garrison put up numbers that ranked high in California and in the nation.
3/9/62
Lincoln’s Vernus Ragsdale won the 100-yard dash in :09.8 and 220 in :22.2, and anchored a come-from-behind 880-yard relay victory in 1:32.2 in cold, blustery weather, but host Grossmont (47) outpointed the Hornets (42) and Compton Centennial (40) in the season-opening triangular meet.
3/14/62
Ray Alexander doubled in the 100 and 220 in :09.9 and :21.9 and Gavin Riley logged a 1:58.8 880 in Point Loma’s 68 2/3-35 1/3 dual meet win over Mount Miguel.
3/15/62
Lincoln beat Hoover, 58 ½-36 ½ in an Eastern League dual at Hoover that had moments of comic drama.
Hoover’s John Koethe “won” the 220-yard dash, shocking unbeaten Vernus Ragsdale, and Rags’ teammates and followers, his “posse” in 21st century nomenclature.
Koethe covered the distance over the tight curve and traditionally slow Cardinals track in a stunning :21.1. Ragsdale, 10 yards behind, was in disbelief at the finish line, as were all in the stands.
DREADED ADMINISTRATIVE GLITCH
What happened?
The maintenance and grounds personnel at Hoover had erred when lining the track and putting down the runners’ lime lane markings. The crew created a lane that required Koethe to cover only approximately 205 yards.
Even Koethe was nonplussed as he was congratulated by a swarm of red-clad teammates. A good quarter miler (:50.4), the Princeton-bound junior had not run better than :23.6 in the 220.
The lane error was discovered and, after a few minutes of raised voices and arm waving by Lincoln coach Bobby Smith and Cardinals boss Raleigh Holt, the race was declared no contest and the event’s nine points were erased.
3/24/62
Vernus Ragsdale bolted to a :09.5 100-yard dash in the National City Junior Chamber of Commerce Relays at Sweetwater.
Ragsdale’s was the second fastest, to Roscoe Cook’s wind-aided :09.4 in 1957, ever run by a San Diego-area prep.
There was no wind gauge on site, so Ragsdale’s feat, whether it was above or under the allowable 4.447 miles per hour, took on questionable status.
I was the writer covering the event for the Evening Tribune, which carried a headline over my weekly, follow-up With the Preps column, “Let the Wind Blow, National City JC’s Will Never Know.”
Reaction to the story and the headline, which I did not write, resulted in my receiving an unfriendly telephone call from Sweetwater athletic director Tom Parker.
“Mr. Smith, you no longer are welcome at Sweetwater,” was the gist of Parker’s comments.
Almost 50 years later, at a luncheon of retired track coaches, the late Rich Gehring, a hard-working and principled coach for three decades, unsmilingly repeated to me the no-wind-gauge headline.
Wind gauges were used mostly at more major events, such as the CIF championships.
The relays were staffed by Gehring and volunteer junior chamber of commerce personnel.
I should have taken a more temperate approach and at least given Gehring or the Jaycees an opportunity to respond.
3/30/62
Lincoln beat San Diego, 58 ½-45 ½, in the pivotal Eastern League dual before a roaring crowd at Lincoln (including many watching from behind a fence hundreds of yards away on Imperial Avenue) as Vernus Ragsdale won the 100 in :09.8 and 220 in :22.1 and then made a rare appearance in the broad jump, finishing third at 22 feet, behind teammate Walter Scott’s 23 ¾.
Twins Elmer and Eddie Logans kept San Diego close, Eddie winning the 440 in :50.3 and Elmer the 120-yard high hurdles in :15.4 and 180-yard lows in :19.8.
FAST SAINTSMAN
The Crawford track, perched on a high plateau and offering favorable breezes from the West, was the site of many good 100-yard dash times, the latest a :09.7 by St. Augustine’s Henry (Bunny) Daniels.
4/10/62
Bruce Long pole vaulted 13 feet, 5 inches, and raised his Point Loma school record in a 77-26 win over Mission Bay.
Bryce Santry had set a Pointers record of 12-9 in the 1935 Metropolitan League finals. Santry competed with a bamboo pole and became a vocal critic of the modern, more flexible fiberglass implement (“It’s like a pogo stick,” complained Santry) used by Long and others.
Santry went so far as to bring a pressure gauge to one Long’s meets, comparing the minimal flex of a bamboo pole with Long’s implement.
Long and Point Loma coach Ed Thomas, who approved Santry’s appearance after Santry had contacted me at the newspaper, regarded the demonstration with subdued amusement.
4/12/62
Monte Vista’s Lynn Chenowth took the section lead with a 13-foot, 6 ½-inch pole vault and was second in the 180-yard low hurdles and high jump but La Jolla shook off a wind-biting cold at Scripps Field and won the dual meet, 68-36.
4/13/62
Helix won its fifth consecutive Grossmont League dual, 77-25, over El Capitan and miler Ted Hack lowered his section-leading mile mark to 4:24.7.
John Garrison of Hoover ran the season’s fastest 880, 1:56, and Tom Agsten was a double winner at :10.1 and :22.1 in the 100 and 220, offsetting a double by Crawford’s Bill Rainey, who won the 440 in :52.6 and pole vault at 12-6.
Hoover won the last-event, 880-yard relay in 1:30.3 and the meet, 56-48.
5/6/62
A consensus of coaches and some observers declared there was no over-the-limit wind in Vernus Ragsdale’s :09.6 100 in the Eastern League trials at Crawford, although a surprising 09.8 by San Diego’s Raymond Dixon in Class B was declared wind-aided.
5/11/62
Top mark of the Eastern’s evening finals was the league-record 1:54.4 880 by Hoover’s John Garrison. Only Mission Bay’s Jim Cerveny (1:52.7) in 1957 had run faster.
Other league records were the :49.9 440 by St. Augustine’s James Moore and :21.7 220 by Lincoln’s Vernus Ragsdale, who also won the 100 in :09.7 and teamed with Ron Peavy, Robert Miller, and Larry Greenwood to set an 880-yard relay record of 1:28.2.
Escondido’s Jim Pritchard continued the ascension of pole vaulters, clearing 13-3 to set a Metropolitan League record in finals at Mar Vista.
Helix, undefeated in dual meet competition, came up short as Grossmont won the Grossmont League finals with 64 points to the Highlanders’ 43.
Steve Adams was a double winner in the Grossmont finals at El Cajon Valley, winning the 100 in :09.9 and 220 in :21.5.
5/18/62
Trees had been planted behind the south end of the track but had not matured to help shield the wind when the CIF finals were awarded to Kearny in 1961 and the result of races run away from the trees was predictable.
Only one flat race, Dave Blunt’s :21.0 220, was not wind aided.
Kearny was host again for the CIF finals and trials.
The wind was blowing 7-10 miles an hour and gusting higher on the first of the two-day trials.
Steve Adams took advantage with a :09.4 100 followed by the :09.5 of Point Loma’s Ray Alexander.
5/19/62
Eastern, Western, and Metropolitan League athletes gathered the following day and Lincoln’s Vernus Ragsdale, with wind, raced to a :09.6 100 and :20.7 220.
Perhaps most impressive achievement of the day was a 6-foot, 3 1/8-inch high jump by 5-foot, 8-inch Class C sophomore Eddy Hanks of Hoover, who would go on to set varsity records.
5/26/62
Vernus Ragsdale turned in more exciting but unrealistic times of :09.4 and :20.3 as the wind continued in the finals.
Cold and overcast weather prevailed as Lincoln won the team race with 39 points to Grossmont’s 32 (Foothillers also won Classes B and C) and San Diego’s 19.
Lincoln also served notice that it could be a contender for the team title in the following week’s state meet when it tied the County record with a 1:27.2 recording in the 880 relay and James Kennedy went 23-7 ¼ in the broad jump.
Grossmont’s Ed Speed beat his teammate and season-leading shot putter Brad Baer with a 58-11 ½ effort. Baer had a gone 59-2 ¼.
Speed reached 61-6 ¼ the previous year but had been inconsistent through this spring.
6/1/62
Lincoln unofficially tied Los Angeles Jefferson for the team championship, each with 14 points at Modesto Junior College.
The Hornets roared into contention when James Kennedy beat a loaded field with a stunning, 24-foot, 5 ¾-inch broad jump early in the competition.
Lincoln had caught a break when films from the afternoon trials showed that Vernus Ragsdale had tied for a qualifying fourth in :09.7 in his heat of the 100.
It did not hurt that Ragsdale’s coach, Bobby Smith, had been an international pole vaulter from San Diego High and San Diego State in the late ‘forties and early ‘fifties and was a friend of Cornelius (Dutch) Warmerdam, the former world recordholder in the event and the state meet director.
Ragsdale was given the ninth lane, which was next to a barrier and screen separating spectators from the track. He unofficially finished third in :09.6 in the final, and was second to L.A. Fremont’s Richard Stebbins’ :20.9 in the 220 in :21.1. Ragsdale had blazed the straightaway in the trials in a 7.4 m.p.h. wind-aided :20.4.
EXCHANGE PROBLEM
Lincoln ran 1:27.1 in the 880 relay trials but slipped to fourth in 1:27.8 in the evening because of a poor exchange between Ragsdale and Larry Greenwood.
Hoover’s John Garrison and Monte Vista’s Lynn Chenowth were the only other San Diego Section point winners
Garrison tied Jim Cerveny’s County record with a 1:52.7 and was second in the 880, won by Chico’s Doug Parker in 1:52.2. Chenowth tied for fourth in the pole vault at 13-6.
Helix’ Ted Hack was fifth in one of two mile races but eighth overall in 4:24.4 as junior Dennis Carr of La Habra Lowell set a national record of 4:08.7. Carr’s best had been 4:18.8.
San Diego’s Elmer Logans ran a wind-aided :19.0 in the 180-yard low hurdles trials and was a non-scoring sixth with a no-wind :19.1 in the finals.
6/4/62
A review of film from the finals showed that Vernus Ragsdale was fifth, not third, in the 100, dropping the Hornets to 12 points and giving L.A. Jefferson the title.
“That’s news to me,” said Lincoln coach Bobby Smith when notified by The San Diego Union‘s Chuck Sawyer, who had read a wire-service announcement.
“I just took our trophy downtown to get it engraved,” said the disappointed Smith.
Rick, your post on the 1962 prep track brought back memories. I was a sophomore at Lincoln at the time. I vividly remember the dual meet with the Cavers. It was at Lincoln with an overflow crowd including people lined up outside the surrounding chain link fence on Imperial Ave. Rags for me was the highlight. When he made the turn on the 220 and the relay, his feet didn’t appear to touch the track, he was flying. Kennedy’s broad jump at the State meet was astounding. I have consistently bragged over the years that we won the State track meet that year (kinda, briefly). Kennedy, Bettis and I were on the Encanto Little League team in1958 that almost won the San Diego area before losing to Point Loma 4-3.
Great memory, Cord. A Lincoln-San Diego track meet always was raucous. You might have played against Gary Rucker’s Point Loma team. Ruck is a longtime friend. Catlin and I will try to hook up with you for lunch. We’re leaving for a week in Puerto Vallarta. I’ll try to set up something in June.
Could you please answer my post I sent to you if you could. About 1960. Kearny High School basketball season. Plus Valhalla High School season when I coached the boys varsity team. 1983 to 87 season. Thank you. If you already did that. I missed it & am sorry Thanks
John Gillilan
John, I’m sorry but I missed your post. Can you tell me which questions you had about the 1960 Komets and 1983-87 Norsemen?
News articles in the union or tribune on both. Kearny & Valhalla
Thanks
John Gillilan
That would entail going back to the library and researching. You can get a lot of information by Searching the blog for 1960 Kearny and Valhalla for the years mentioned. Microfilm at the library is unavailable because the library reference room is closed. Try to give me something specific. I may have something in my files.