TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL
TRACK CHAMPIONS, 1905-2008
by Dr. William (Billy) Wilbanks
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
UIL ARCHIVES
RESEARCH FOR THIS VOLUME
CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF STATE TRACK
MEET
THE ACADEMIES VS. THE HIGH SCHOOLS
GIRLS ADDED TO STATE MEET
CHAPTER TWO: TEAM CHAMPIONS
THE ACADEMY CHAMPIONS
THE FIRST STATE HIGH SCHOOL TEAM CHAMPION
BOYS CHAMPIONS, 1905-2006
GIRLS CHAMPIONS, 1972-2006
SCHOOL RANKINGS FOR 101 YEARS
CHAPTER THREE: GREAT INDIVIDUAL
CHAMPIONS
MOST CAREER GOLD MEDALS
MOST GOLD MEDALS AT ONE STATE MEET
MOST POINTS SCORED AT ONE STATE MEET
CHAMPIONS WHO HAVE WON SAME EVENT FOUR TIMES
“ONE-MAN” & “ONE-WOMAN” STATE TEAM CHAMPIONS
CHAMPIONS WHO HELD/HOLD STATE RECORDS
CHAMPIONS WHO BROKE NATIONAL H.S. RECORDS
TEXANS HAVE DOMINATED SEVERAL EVENTS
H.S. CHAMPIONS WHO BECAME OLYMPIC MEDAL WINNERS
CHAMPIONS WHO BECAME FAMOUS IN OTHER FIELDS
NARRATIVES OF 39 SELECTED MALE CHAMPIONS
NARRATIVES OF 17 SELECTED FEMALE CHAMPIONS
CHAPTER FOUR: TRACK AS ”FAMILY
AFFAIR”
SIBLING CHAMPIONS
PARENT-CHILD CHAMPIONS
LEADING TRACK FAMILIES
The remaining 11 files in this folder/website contain the
following:
2. BOYS CHAMPIONS BY YEAR:
(Excel file)
Includes individual & relay champions by event & year (1905-2008)
Ex: 2008 2A 100 meters San Antonio Cole Evans, R.J. 10.65
3. BOYS CHAMPIONS BY SCHOOL & YEAR:
(Excel File)
Includes individual & relay champions by school & year (1905-2008)
Ex: 2002 4A 110 hurdles Lancaster Jones, Courtney 13.78
2003 4A shot put Lancaster Wafford, Greg 58’ 05”
4. BOYS RELAY CHAMPIONS BY SCHOOL & YEAR:
(Excel File)
Includes names of four members of each relay champion by School & Year
(1905-2008)
Ex: 1985 2A 1600 relay Woodsboro 3:19.2 Avery, Robert Avery, Royce Lewis, Ricky
Zabel, Matt
1992 2A 400 relay Woodsboro 42.30 Friar, Victor Deslonzy, John Anderson, Ray
Lewis, Shawn
5. GIRLS CHAMPIONS BY YEAR:
(Excel File)
Includes individual & relay champions by event & year (1972-2008)
Ex: 1983 4A 800 meters Waco Midway Wiese, Paula 2:10.1
6. GIRLS CHAMPIONS BY SCHOOL & YEAR:
(Excel File)
Includes individual & relay champions by school & year (1972-2008)
Ex: 1975 3A Team Waco Midway over Mexia, 56-54 56
1980 3A 1600 relay Waco Midway 3.54.4
7. GIRLS RELAY CHAMPIONS BY SCHOOL & YEAR:
(Excel File)
Includes names of four members of each relay champion by School & Year
(1972-200)
Ex: 1974 B 880-relay Sundown 1:44.5 Phillips, Dorothy Parker, Marva King, Alma
Jones, Lucy
1974 B mile relay Sundown 4:03.3 Jones, Lucy King, Alma Parker, Marva Phillips,
Dorothy
8. RECORDS IN 2008:
(Excel File)
Includes current record in each event for boys and girls
Ex: Boys 100-meter dash National Record 1990 Henry Neal Greenville TX 9.9—10.14
State Record 1990 Henry Neal Greenville TX 9.9—10.14
Conf 1A Record 1985 Stanley Kerr Snook 10.34*
9. PROGRESSION OF RECORDS, 1905-2008 BY EVENT:
(Excel File)
Includes “history” of records for each event (current and defunct) for boys and
girls (1905-2008)
Ex: 180-yards Low Hurdles ---1952-1966
STATE RECORD
1952 Herod, Bob Brownsville 20.0
1952 Amonet, Eldon Haskell 20.0
1962 Roderick, John Dallas Highland Pk 18.0
10. HOW RECORDS WERE “CONVERTED”:
Notation explains how yards were converted to meters (440-yd dash to 400 meters)
and how hand-timed meters were converted to F.A.T. times (37.3 to 37.44*)
11. CLASS B MEET AT DENTON, 1931-1932:
There was a separate Class B state track meet from 1931-1942 in Denton. These
results are incorporated into all files but are listed here separately since the
results were “lost” for many years and are unknown to most fans.
12. SCHOOL LISTS OF CHAMPIONS:
Selected lists of champions by school suitable from display but lists for all
schools can be taken from files #3 & #6
William Lee (Billy) Wilbanks was born in Temple TX on May 30, 1940. He graduated as valedictorian of Belton H.S. in 1958 and was an all-state basketball player and the leading scorer (21.6 ppg) on Belton’s State AA state championship basketball team. He played in the Texas H.S. Coaches All-Star Game and the Texas-Oklahoma Oil Bowl Game and went on to play as a freshman at Texas Tech and at Abilene Christian College. He was also a two-time district champion in the 880-yd dash and in tennis (singles) at Belton. He never ran in the state track meet as he finished only 4th in the region in the 880 in 1957 & 1958.
Wilbanks received a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the State U. of New York at Albany and taught criminal justice for 27 years at Florida International University in Miami FL. He wrote twelve books including several books on homicide (e.g., The Make My Day Law; Murder in Miami) and on police officers killed in the line of duty (e.g., Forgotten Heroes: Police Officers Killed in Early Florida, 1840-1925 and True Heroines: Police Women Killed in the Line of Duty in the U.S., 1916-1999). He also appeared more than 20 times on national television (e.g., 60 Minutes, Nightline, CrossFire; Today Show; NBC, CBS & ABC News) as a crime expert. He retired in 1999 and returned to Belton. He moved to Georgetown (Sun City) TX in 2006.
While researching the history of Belton H.S. sports Wilbanks discovered the lost story of the 1909 Belton track team that won the first U.I.L. state high school track team championship. He made the forgotten heroes of 1909 the centerpiece of the Belton H.S. Wall of Honor which he built in 2001 and which includes over 88 individual plaques and 5 team plaques from 1909-2006. The Wall of Honor is on the internet at: www.beltonwallofhonor.com
Wilbanks also has a website on the history of the state boys & girls basketball tournament which includes an index and narratives on 644 boys and girls championship teams from 1921-2008. The website includes a breakdown of the 644 teams by counties; more than 3,000 all-state tournament players for boys and girls by year and school; teams and coaches with most championships, etc. See: www.TexasBasketballChamps.com
Those with corrections/additions to this track & field website should contact the author so that later versions of the website will contain the correct or additional information. The website will be updated each year after the state high school track meet held annually in mid-May.
Self-Published by Dr. Wilbanks on Computer Disc in 2005 & 2006. Placed on Internet website in May, 2008. Website may be searched by keyword, name, school, event, record, etc. in Word & Excel. Author seeks corrections and additions as website is constantly updated.: Dr. Billy Wilbanks, WilbanksWilliam@hotmail.com 512-864-4756, 281 Whispering Wind, Georgetown (Sun City) TX 78633. Website: DrBillyWilbanks.com
UIL ARCHIVES
I first visited the University Interscholastic League’s state track meet
archives in 2001 to see what information I could find on state track champions
from my hometown of Belton. I discovered that the first UIL record holders in
the 220-yd dash (“Holcomb”) and the 880-yd dash (“O’Connor”) were from Belton
but had been forgotten by the town and high school. I searched and found
numerous newspaper articles about the 1909 Belton team which became the first
high school (not academy) to win a UIL state championship and wrote articles
about the “forgotten heroes” of 1909 for the Belton Journal and Temple Daily
Telegram. The 1909 Belton track team became the centerpiece of the Belton H.S.
Athletic Wall of Honor which I built in 2001.
I have contacted more than 400 schools to present them with lists of their track champions over the past 104 years. Few were aware of their school’s (early) history of track and field success and none had a list of all their past state champions. The UIL does have a “computerized” list (see www.uil.utexas.edu/ath then click on “track” and “state tournament champions/records”) of state track champions from 1909 that can be searched via a key word such as “Belton” or “Holcomb.” However, the UIL file does not contain the names of relay members and is not amenable to “sorting” by school and thus “school lists” of track champions in both individual and relay events were not available before this book.
RESEARCH FOR THIS VOLUME
I decided to build a new data base in EXCEL that could be sorted by school and
that would include earlier UIL meets (since the first in 1905) and information
that was not in the UIL file (e.g., the names of relay members as well as
individual champions; the first names of champions before the late 1930’s; the
total number of gold medals won by individuals and schools; and “later career
update” information on as many athletes as could be obtained). The EXCEL file
also allowed the computation of rankings for all Texas schools in most
championship “points” won over the 104 years.
The EXCEL file does not include information on those who placed rather than won their event at the state meet. That information is available for most recent years in the UIL archives (generally in “yearbooks”) but not for earlier years when newspaper articles (not generally available at the UIL ) about the state meet are the only source to give such results for each year. UIL state track meet programs available for almost all years do list athletes who qualified for and participated in the state meet and thus those with an interest in compiling a school list of all state qualifiers could create such a list but only with considerable time and effort at the archives.
Some have expressed an interest in locating the records of the state track meet for African-Americans held at Prairie View before the UIL meet was integrated in the 1960’s and in the state meets for girls held before the UIL’s first girls state meet in 1972. Unfortunately those records are not available at UIL or elsewhere. Some Prairie View records can be found in local newspapers and one book (State Championship Track and Field Events for Blacks in Texas, 1940-1969 by Walter E. Day of Ft. Worth) includes scattered and incomplete newspaper records from 1940-1969.
Another focus of my research was the progression of state and conference records which are available in annual UIL programs but not compiled into progression lists. This book also contains some information on national records available from the National High School Sports Record Book and from newspaper articles for the UIL meet from 1905-2008. Also, results from the National Scholastic Meet in Chicago were added to the later career information of champions who placed in that event held from 1902-1933.
Also, an effort was made to identify some of the greatest stars of the state track meet in the 104 years since the first meet in 1905 with a special focus of many of the “early” stars of the state meet who have been forgotten by their own schools as well as by track fans. Narratives of 54 great champions are included in this volume. An NFL encyclopedia was searched to locate former pro players who had also been high school track champions. The “discovery” that Fay (Mule) Wilson of Honey Grove was the first former (1922) Texas track champion to play in the NFL was shared with Honey Grove and Texas A&M where he is enshrined on the Aggie Wall of Honor. Over 100 other former track champions have played in the NFL.
One chapter is devoted to Texas high school track champions who won Olympic gold medals. The first such champion---Morris Kirksey of the Waxahachie Academy—was a state champion in 1914 and an Olympic champion in 1920 becoming the first Texan to win a track and field Olympic medal. Kirksey had been forgotten by his own hometown of Waxahachie and was unknown toTexas sports historians since he attended Stanford and lived the rest of his life on the west coast.
My research and this book are not an attempt to write an official record book for UIL or to replace the UIL archives. It is intended to provide additional information that is not readily available from the UIL archives. I received great cooperation from Dr. Charles Breithaupt, Peter Contreras, Beverly Linder and Cheridah Vaughn of the UIL who encouraged the research and provided total access to all UIL records. They gladly accepted additional information that I found. For example, when I discovered that there had been a UIL State Class B track meet in Denton from 1931-1942 that had been forgotten and was not included in the UIL archives & file, the UIL readily accepted the results I obtained (from newspaper records) for that meet and added them to their data base.
The research for this book included visits and/or mail contacts with more than 400 towns/high schools to obtain additional data. Many schools were given “frameable” lists of former champions for their trophy case and asked to suggest townspeople and former coaches who might have “later career” information about athletes on their list of state champions. In many cases local libraries had microfilms of early local newspapers that provided such information as first names of champions as well as the names of relay members which were not given in UIL records. Also, alphabetical listings of past track letter winners from university track media guides were cross-checked with the listing of Texas high school track champs.
Also, many former state champs were located and contacted to obtain information about their later sports “career” and/or information on their later occupation/career. The UIL provided the author with a “booth” at the 2004-2006 state track meets where numerous ex-athletes and coaches were contacted and asked for information.
The lack of such later career information on many of the former champs in the EXCEL data base should not be construed as meaning that those champions were less successful but that no information was found for them. Hopefully, those with later career info on others will contact the author so that later versions of the website will include this data.
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