Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #43: Gill1918 presents Alan Wardsworth "Recording Your School's T&F History"

Transcript

#43: Gill1918 presents Alan Wardsworth "Recording Your School's T&F History" · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
• 0:03
  coaches, for coaches powered by Gill Athletics.
• 0:06
  Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
• 0:09
  Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
• 0:12
  you grow as a coach. We'll bring in the once a year
• 0:15
  track clinic straight to your ears daily.
• 0:17
  Interested in creating your own episode?
• 0:19
  Everyone's welcome to participate.
• 0:21
  Check out the show notes below For more information.
• 0:23
  Now let's get into today's topic.
• 0:27
  Hi guys, my name is Alan Wordsworth and I'm the jump
• 0:30
  coach at Center Valley High School in Spokane, WA, which is
• 0:34
  on the east side of the state. And 1st, I'd like to thank Mike
• 0:38
  and Gil Athletics for the 1918 project.
• 0:42
  It's been a cool series of podcasts.
• 0:45
  My topic today is on how to promote the history of your
• 0:49
  school's track program. And here at Central Valley High
• 0:52
  School, this would be our 100th year of track and field for boys
• 0:58
  and our 50th year for girls. And so it's not going to be an
• 1:02
  XS and OS type podcast, but instead how I went about putting
• 1:09
  together the history of our program.
• 1:12
  And as you can imagine, going back 100 years, it was really
• 1:16
  difficult to find some of that information.
• 1:20
  But there's a couple of key things that I did that made it a
• 1:22
  little more manageable. With that said, I initially
• 1:28
  thought I was going to make a just a document, I guess, and
• 1:32
  which is now turned into I'm up to the 1980s and it's 6070 pages
• 1:38
  at this point. And so I'll explain that and how
• 1:41
  we went about it. And to start, the the history of
• 1:48
  Cinder Valley was always thought to be the school district was
• 1:53
  formed in 1926. So we were kind of prepping.
• 1:57
  We were going to do some T-shirts and throughout some
• 2:02
  social media graphics next year. But to my surprise, I was
• 2:06
  watching a basketball game and one of the commentators happened
• 2:10
  to mention that our team had just played their 100th year of
• 2:14
  basketball. And so I got to thinking, boy, I
• 2:17
  wonder when track and field got started at Central Valley.
• 2:21
  There was a lot of information online that proved to be
• 2:25
  incorrect. And I certainly can see how the
• 2:29
  historian that did that information got it wrong.
• 2:33
  After I I found out what I found out in my research, as odd as it
• 2:39
  sounds, our district had no idea when our district actually
• 2:43
  formed. Everybody thought it was like,
• 2:45
  like I said in 1926. But I reached out to a local
• 2:50
  small museum here in the valley and they're able to do some
• 2:55
  research and find that our school actually formed in 1924.
• 3:00
  And there was a series of basically one room schoolhouses
• 3:05
  around the area. And then one of the larger
• 3:08
  schools, which was called Vera High School, rented out their
• 3:12
  upstairs floors to what would become Cinder Valley High
• 3:15
  School. And for 1924, they just had
• 3:19
  academics going on. In 1925 they added basketball,
• 3:25
  boys track and boys and girls tennis, and once I found out
• 3:31
  that information, I was able to track down our first coach, guy
• 3:37
  named Lester Herman. He was a math teacher, track
• 3:41
  coach and a football coach. And football may have started in
• 3:46
  1925, we don't know for sure, but every year from 1925 to 1942
• 3:53
  they played the Armistice game with West Valley High School.
• 3:57
  The reason it's a little confusing is because in 1932
• 4:02
  there is a picture that says Center Valley High School's
• 4:05
  first football team. And that very well could be
• 4:08
  because that was the first year they put in lights at our
• 4:12
  stadium and it was the first school to have been played under
• 4:16
  the lights. And it was also the first year I
• 4:20
  think that they started playing actual leagues instead of a
• 4:24
  invite type system. So we're not really sure about
• 4:30
  football to be honest. But as far as track goes, there
• 4:34
  is an actual picture of our 1925 and 26 teams with Lester himself
• 4:39
  and the boys. And one of our first athletes,
• 4:46
  guy named Albert Turner, competed at the state
• 4:50
  championships in 1925 and then 26.
• 4:54
  And he would also be the first one to actually place at A state
• 5:00
  championship. And back then, Washington, the
• 5:04
  state track meet was held at in Pullman, WA at Washington State
• 5:08
  University. And it was for all divisions.
• 5:11
  So it was a true state track meet and most schools that
• 5:16
  competed, especially back then pretty much resided in near a
• 5:21
  train line. So if those kids were able to
• 5:24
  get to a train and then travel to Pullman, they came from some
• 5:28
  pretty good distances. And and actually the state track
• 5:34
  meet goes all the way back to 19 O 5.
• 5:36
  During World War One they did not have a track meet and then
• 5:41
  in 1920 they didn't have a state track meet, but they had some
• 5:46
  really interesting events. They had the 42 inch turtles,
• 5:50
  which was eventually discontinued.
• 5:53
  They had the 50 yard dash. They had the hammer throw.
• 5:57
  I'm imagining they didn't have a cage, which would be quite
• 6:00
  something to see, but it goes all the way back to 19 O 5.
• 6:06
  So you're probably wondering how I would about compiling all this
• 6:10
  information. The first thing I started with
• 6:12
  was the Washington State Track and Field Annual, which is a
• 6:16
  publication put out by Ryan Zakula, and you can find it at
• 6:22
  washingtontrack.com. It's about 1/2 inch thick, cost
• 6:27
  $25. It's a really cool publication,
• 6:31
  everything track and field. It's got the previous year's
• 6:35
  best results from all divisions in all events.
• 6:39
  And then it's got historically, it's got usually the top 250
• 6:45
  kids in every event. And then it's got some events
• 6:51
  that are no longer contested. It's got information on college
• 6:56
  kids in the state of Washington, Olympians from the state of
• 7:00
  Washington. It's packed full of interesting
• 7:05
  track and field information. If you are a track and field
• 7:09
  fan, especially a statistics fan, even if you're not from the
• 7:13
  state of Washington, it would be worth a read it.
• 7:17
  Also, if you go to their website, there's an awful lot of
• 7:19
  digitized information about track and field in Washington as
• 7:23
  well. So that's where I started.
• 7:25
  I contacted Ryan, he was able to send me the programs from the
• 7:30
  30s up until the 70s from most of the state track meets during
• 7:36
  World War Two there was there was programs that were lost.
• 7:42
  Who knows what happened to those, but I was able to find
• 7:45
  out an awful lot of information from those programs.
• 7:48
  And also I used the Spokesman Review, which is our newspaper,
• 7:53
  which has everything scanned and documented.
• 7:58
  And I was able to go year by year and look up information on
• 8:02
  the various track programs around the area.
• 8:06
  So the publication I decided to put together would contain our
• 8:09
  league records, our district records, regionals and state or
• 8:14
  whatever variation we had moving forward.
• 8:18
  And so that's kind of where I, I, I started.
• 8:21
  And then as I continued, I was able to find more information
• 8:26
  from the Spokesman Review, which is our local newspaper.
• 8:30
  And they had digitized all their publications back into the
• 8:33
  1800s. So I was able to just plug in
• 8:38
  Sun Valley High School track and field the particular year I was
• 8:42
  looking for. And then I kind of hit upon just
• 8:46
  searching the month of May and I found out an awful lot of
• 8:49
  information on those track meets.
• 8:52
  I would usually find more information as years went on.
• 8:59
  It's amazing. They must had a huge staff at
• 9:02
  the Spokesman in the 40s and especially the 50s prior to that
• 9:08
  back in the 20s. Really interesting that it was
• 9:12
  more of a a gossip newspaper because we I found out that
• 9:17
  Lester, our original track coach, was off to Everett to
• 9:22
  visit his family. But he was eager to get back to
• 9:26
  start track practice. So I I found out really cool
• 9:30
  information like that. And then as the 50s, as I got
• 9:36
  into the 50's, the amount of information there was not only
• 9:42
  our high school performances, but our JV performances, the
• 9:48
  junior high performances were all listed.
• 9:51
  As I got closer to the 1970s, you absolutely could tell when
• 9:56
  television started take over the media because the paper got
• 10:00
  smaller and smaller and smaller. And the other interesting thing
• 10:06
  was you're able to see the progression of events like the
• 10:09
  pole vault. You could absolutely see where
• 10:12
  they used bamboo poles jumping into sawdust.
• 10:16
  And when the innovation of steel poles and aluminum poles came
• 10:20
  along, there's a big spike in their performances.
• 10:25
  And then of course, when fiberglass poles came into
• 10:27
  being, also another big spike you can see when they started
• 10:32
  using starting blocks at the high school level.
• 10:36
  Really interesting. Back to the pole vault.
• 10:38
  I've got a picture of one of our kids going 14 feet for the first
• 10:41
  time and it is literally him over a crossbar.
• 10:45
  His coach is standing down underneath and it looks like he
• 10:49
  is falling straight down onto the ground and it's just a pile
• 10:54
  of sand and that's what he's landing on from 14 feet, one
• 10:59
  inch. So pretty amazing.
• 11:02
  They also started adding a few more pictures in the 1950s and I
• 11:06
  was able to grab those pictures and and use those for my
• 11:12
  document. The problem was prior to that
• 11:15
  the pictures were super grainy. But what I did find was I was
• 11:19
  able to take an original picture of Albert Turner from 1926 and
• 11:26
  post him into ChatGPT and then it produced a modern rendering
• 11:32
  of him, which is pretty cool. But what I noticed was the kids,
• 11:39
  especially from the 50s back, we're a lot thinner than the
• 11:43
  kids are today. And when ChatGPT makes a modern
• 11:48
  interpretation of him, it puts a little more meat on the bone.
• 11:52
  I guess he's a little more chunky than he should have been.
• 11:57
  So because he was definitely thin the back in 1925, but today
• 12:02
  he's not when ChatGPT gets done with him.
• 12:06
  So that was that was kind of my goal.
• 12:10
  And like I said, I've just kind of progressed through most of
• 12:14
  that information that I have found has been from our
• 12:18
  newspaper, a little bit from the track and field annual.
• 12:23
  And then the last thing I did was to make some graphics
• 12:27
  because what we found is in 1925, we had a track meet
• 12:32
  against Cheney High School, who, because we've dropped from 4A to
• 12:37
  3A, is in our league again. And we were able to get both
• 12:41
  teams together and take a picture of not only the boys
• 12:44
  team, but the girls team celebrating 50 years of track
• 12:47
  and field. And then our athletic director
• 12:50
  who was doing the announcing, I happened to notice that we had a
• 12:54
  couple of alumni kids and asked them to join the pitcher.
• 12:58
  And as it turned out, there was a whole bunch of kids that were
• 13:02
  now adults that were officials that were that happened to be at
• 13:07
  the track and they're able to all get in the picture.
• 13:10
  So we had a a really cool picture of about 100 kids to
• 13:14
  celebrate our our 100th year of track and field and our 50th
• 13:18
  year of track and field for girls.
• 13:21
  The last thing we did was produce AT Shirt and especially
• 13:28
  for, I happen to be a retired graphic design and photography
• 13:32
  teacher, so to make up AT Shirt was pretty easy for me.
• 13:36
  But I've talked to a lot of coaches that are like, well, you
• 13:38
  know, I'd like to do this, but you know, I don't have the the
• 13:43
  the knowledge, the software, those kind of things to put
• 13:45
  together something like that and to be real creative.
• 13:48
  What you can do is once again, use ChatGPT plug in what you
• 13:54
  would like it to look like. And you do have to be very
• 13:58
  specific, but it was able to produce some graphics that we
• 14:02
  could use for AT shirt. So if you don't really have the
• 14:05
  experience, you know, or the resources to find, you know,
• 14:09
  somebody that can put together the graphics for AT shirt,
• 14:12
  that's another option for you. So that was our our kind of our
• 14:20
  celebration to the end of our our season this year.
• 14:23
  And it was really fun. Kids seem to have a great time
• 14:26
  with it and as well as the coaches too and we happen to
• 14:31
  have I think this year our team is pretty big.
• 14:34
  We have over 100 boys in our track team.
• 14:37
  We have a little bit smaller girls team.
• 14:39
  I think we had 47 all together. So we full both full time and
• 14:44
  part time. We have 11 coaches, but we boast
• 14:48
  this year was our record amount, 303 years of track coaching
• 14:54
  experience, which I guess that just means we're all pretty old,
• 14:59
  but it was it was a great time. Just about everybody really
• 15:03
  enjoys all that, the history of track and field and especially
• 15:07
  when you have a rich history like we do, it was it was pretty
• 15:11
  fun this season. The other thing I've done to
• 15:14
  promote track and field is in between our school and our
• 15:20
  gymnasium, our main gym there is like a small hallway that
• 15:26
  connects the two, and we've put our track and field record
• 15:29
  boards up and they're essentially A4 by 8.
• 15:33
  If you can imagine the size of a 4 by 8 sheet of plywood that's
• 15:37
  hanging on the wall for both boys and girls, there's two.
• 15:41
  And then each event that we have has a picture of the athlete
• 15:46
  usually competing, although there's a couple that are really
• 15:49
  old that we just have a yearbook picture of.
• 15:53
  It's got the pitcher of the athlete on the left hand side
• 15:57
  with their performance. And then on the right hand side
• 16:01
  we've got the top 10 performances of all time.
• 16:05
  And then it's got below that, the class performance.
• 16:08
  So like freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, if they happen
• 16:12
  to have won A state championship, then their
• 16:16
  performances in gold, whether you're in the the number one
• 16:20
  person or you're just in the after me in the top 10.
• 16:24
  So that's kind of cool. I always notice we've got
• 16:27
  basketball games that the crowd just gathers around to check it
• 16:31
  out. Our athletes.
• 16:34
  It's a big draw to increase our population of our sport.
• 16:38
  The kids are always checking it out.
• 16:40
  And boy, by the end of the season, as kids have started to
• 16:45
  jump on to the top ten list and and break records, they're
• 16:50
  always after me to get that updated.
• 16:53
  So I think that's a great draw for track and field because
• 16:56
  everybody that's what they do. They check out the records, see
• 17:00
  if they can make it. And that's that's kind of the
• 17:03
  goal. So that that's a a big draw for
• 17:05
  us. On the opposite wall we have our
• 17:11
  college athlete board, which is, yeah, it's similar to our track
• 17:16
  and field records. It's the same roughly 4 by 8
• 17:21
  size board. And we started with one that we
• 17:25
  expanded it to. And around 2015, 2016, we just
• 17:30
  had an incredible run of athletes.
• 17:33
  So we had both sides completely packed.
• 17:37
  And what it is, is it's a picture of our athlete and it's
• 17:42
  got the sport that they're doing when they graduated and then
• 17:47
  it's got those the university that they are attending and
• 17:50
  participating in. And then we keep those up while
• 17:54
  they're college athletes. So we've had 405060 athletes at
• 18:00
  one time. There was a period of time when
• 18:03
  we completely filled up both boards and then we had just the
• 18:08
  pictures of the kids, you know, taped onto the wall right next
• 18:12
  to him. Now that our population has
• 18:14
  dropped a bit because at one time we had 2600 students in our
• 18:22
  school and now we now that we've opened a new high school, we
• 18:25
  have about 1100. So we don't have as many kids
• 18:28
  participating in college, But that's also a big draw for the
• 18:31
  kids to be able to see how many are playing football, how many
• 18:34
  are doing track, how many are doing basketball and where,
• 18:37
  where are they bound off to. So I, I think that's been a very
• 18:42
  big draw for our program and sports in general.
• 18:47
  So that's about it. If you would like to get a hold
• 18:50
  of me, just contact Mike. And once again, I'd like to
• 18:54
  thank Mike and Gil Athletics for giving me the opportunity to
• 18:59
  talk about our program and what's going on at Cinder Valley
• 19:03
  High School and, and the history of track and field and how to
• 19:07
  promote it. But once again, if you have any
• 19:10
  questions, feel free to reach out to me.
• 19:13
  Thank you. Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here.
• 19:16
  Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Guild 1918
• 19:19
  Project series. It's really my mission, my
• 19:22
  passion to bring you massive amounts of value and I hope this
• 19:27
  one hit the mark. The Guild 1918 Project is really
• 19:31
  dependent on you if for you to build your own episode, to hear
• 19:34
  your voice, to have your voice heard you have something to say
• 19:38
  and teach other coaches out there.
• 19:40
  So please get a hold of me, e-mail, text message, Twitter,
• 19:45
  smoke signals, get a hold of me and let's help create your
• 19:48
  episode of the Guild 1918 Project.
• 19:50
  Hope you enjoy today and we'll see you tomorrow.