t-and-f: Odd doubles

[Ed Grant]

Netters:         The unsual doubles beind posted for some athletes just indicates how much talent there is out there which never gets to our sport. The posts which I have received on Marla Runyan---and I thank all who sent info---also point to this as, without her vision problems, she may have stuck to soccer and become another Mia Hamm.           We have had a number of cases like that here in NJ, with the transfers coming mostly from soccer (usually because the athletes got a chance to run either CC or indoor/outdoor track and had more success there) or gymnastics (also because of success, but occasionally because of injury). Our best ever girl miler started off as a gymnast but had trouble with her hands breaking out with blisters and switched over (Michelle Rowen). And a tragic case was a girl who lost her arm as a esut of a gymn accident, but became a very successful (if on a smaller scale) Hs and college runner.         Track and field simply has to accept that, in the current climate (and in the past as well), we never get to see a lot of the talent out there.           Our best stories of transfer are of a HS baseball player at Fair Lawn who ran only one race in HS and another at South Side HS, Newark, who ran perhaps three or four. The first was talked into running at the Englewood Memorial meet when NJ athletes could still compete in two strenuous sports in the same season. He went on to set a WR in the straightaway 220 and take a silver medal at Rome (losing a relay gold to a d/q). His name was dave Sime. The second, who always imagiuned himself as another Willie Mays, bunted and legged his way to a .500 batting average, running only indoors in the years when we had no state indoor meet. But he became part of a WR SHR team in college, barely missed making two Olympic teams, one in the HH, the other in the IH, and is now coaching successfully in college. His name is Russ Rogers.                                                     Ed Grant   PS:     And then, of course, Marty Liquori (and Tommy Farrell as well) went to HS imagining themselves as basketball players.