Group pushes to improve Public
League track and field
Barry Temkin
On High Schools
April 17, 2008, 10:14 PM CDT
They gathered in a basement meeting room on the South Side, which seemed
entirely fitting for the mission they are on.
That mission is to breathe significant life into track and field in Chicago's
public schools, where it has all but hit bottom in the years since gas cost 50
cents per gallon.
That was the cost in 1974, when Richard Nixon was trying to run from Watergate
and Lane Tech became the last Chicago Public League school to win a boys state
track team crown, one it shared with Evanston.
A school system that once featured the likes of Ralph Metcalfe, a Tilden
graduate who won four Olympic sprint medals in the 1930s, has not had a top 10
team finisher in the boys Class AA state meet since 1991. In the 2006 and 2007
boys and girls state meets, Public League teams scored a not-so-grand total of
35 points and produced nothing better individually than a fourth-place medal.
That is some of what the Friends of Track and Field faced Monday in its latest
in a series of monthly meetings that began in July. The three-dozen members in
attendance discussed upcoming events and down-the-road dreams, all with a grim
determination to avoid the maddening possibility Chicago might play host to the
world's greatest track and field meet at the 2016 Olympics while its
interscholastic program remained a flop.
"We're going to keep the pressure on to revitalize track and field," said Conrad
Worrill, director of Northeastern Illinois' Carruthers Center for Inner City
Studies. "This is not going to happen right away, but it's going to happen."
Worrill has long bemoaned the lack of participation and success in Public League
track. The league should be a power in the sport, but thousands of kids who
could run fast and jump far have ignored it, and those who have tried it have
been hampered by a lack of facilities and qualified coaches.
Worrill has seen Chicago kids running in the streets at impressive speed and
wondered what they might accomplish if they put on track shoes.
"From the bottom of my heart, we can save a few lives," he said.
Last year he decided to form a group and talked successful real estate developer
Elzie Higginbottom into joining him. The two had first met at a meet about 50
years ago, when Worrill ran for Hyde Park and Higginbottom was a budding state
champion at south suburban Bloom.
Friends of Track and Field has close to 100 members, ranging from former Public
League director J.W. Smith to current coaches and former Dunbar coach Dorothy
Dawson, currently president of USA Track & Field's Illinois association.
The group is having what Worrill calls its "coming-out party" this week in
conjunction with the Windy City Classic, a mostly relays event that starts at 10
a.m. Saturday at Hanson Stadium.
About 700 male and female athletes from about two dozen schools will compete.
Friends of Track and Field will help provide volunteers as well as modest goodie
bags.
Friday night it will put on an inaugural banquet for the athletes, who will
watch a video tribute to Public League track intended not only to give them a
sense of history but also a realization that basketball isn't the only athletic
road from the inner city to prosperity.
Every year hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Public League students pursue
basketball as their only sport, including many who don't survive cuts but still
won't try track, perhaps not realizing that thousands of athletes get college
scholarships in it each year.
According to Chicago Public Schools track coordinator Thomas Smith, about 2,500
athletes participate in boys and girls track. That sounds OK, but a league with
more than 70 schools should have double that number.
Of course, the Public League doesn't really have places to put the kids it
already has. Decent outdoor tracks are scarce, and the league doesn't have one
indoor facility, forcing athletes to train frequently in hallways and gyms and
on sidewalks.
Friends of Track and Field plans to approach corporations in search of
significant funds to obtain an indoor facility as well as to fulfill other
goals. It also will try to do the politicking necessary to get track on the
public agenda.
Others have tried and failed at this, but Friends of Track and Field has a few
things in its favor. One is timing. The Public League is enjoying a mild
resurgence in track participation and performance, and Chicago's Olympic bid
might shame city officials into doing more for the sport.
Another is the group's leadership, which may have the will and connections to
get something done. That includes Worrill, a community activist, and
Higginbottom, a longtime supporter of Mayor Richard M. Daley.
"This is a step," Worrill said. "But we have a lot of work to do."