Comparing Old Pole Vaulting Heights in Small Colleges

[larry-arrington]

I am almost finished the writing of a book on track and field athletics at Roanoke College, a small school in western Virginia. Roanoke, from 1949 through 1952, had a good pole vaulter - by small college standards - who in the final days of bamboo poles and those hard sawdust pits, jumped 13'6" (perhaps 13'9").

I doubt that Track and Field News every covered small colleges to any extent, and besides, I don't think the magazine was being published that far back. Do you have any suggestions on how I might find out how 13'6" in 1952 compares with the efforts of small college jumpers in other parts of the country.

I know that it's easy to find out what Bob Richards and others were doing at the time, but how advanced were small college jumpers in those days?

Any ideas?

Thanks for all of your help.



Larry

[skyin' brian]

The CCIW (College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin) looks to have held an outdoor conference meet since '47 If you open the PDF at this link and go down to page 17 (marked as 15 on the PDF) you can see the winning PV heights for each year.

http://www.cciw.org/spring_track_m/OTF08_Program.pdf

The teams in this meet are all small colleges in (or near) Illinois. Obviously 1949 is before there was an NCAA D3, but these are all D3 schools today.

[tandfman]

Re: Comparing Old Pole Vaulting Heights in Small Colleges

I doubt that Track and Field News every covered small colleges to any extent, and besides, I don't think the magazine was being published that far back.Larry

THe magazine has been published since 1948. I'm going to be out most of the day. If nobody else has been able to help by this evening, I'll see whether I can find anything of interest in T&FN during the period you're looking for. I think we'll find that 13'6" was an excellent mark for a small college vaulter in those days.

[dr ngo]

HTH

I believe Orra McMurry, best known later as a track photographer, was vaulting for Occidental College around that time (class of 1951), but I don't have his best mark. (I suspect he held the college record until Bob Gutowski came along a few years later.)

[dr ngo]

Moreover

In trying to track down some details of Oxy vaulters of the 1950s, I realized (1) that I had overlooked Dick Shivers ('52); (2) that Bob Gutowski ('57) won the NCAA in 1956 (at 14'8") and 1957 (15'9-3/4" WR); and (3) that there is a website: http://graphics.fansonly.com/photos/...mp_history.pdf that provides results of the NAIA meet going back to 1952, which should cover your topic even better. Basically, mid-13s was about as good as it got in those days, enough for a national small-college championship IF it were achieved in the big meet.

[26mi235]

Re: HTH

I believe Orra McMurry, best known later as a track photographer, was vaulting for Occidental College around that time (class of 1951), but I don't have his best mark. (I suspect he held the college record until Bob Gutowski came along a few years later.)

As many people may know, Oxy was a special case of a 'small college' in track and field; they regularly competed with the likes of Stanford and UCLA. For the purposes of the original question, it should probably be treated as a special case. There are some 'not-very-large' DI schools that also are not 'small colleges'.

As a different example, I thought at Trinity University in Texas and at the time they had a DI tennis program and, in fact, I had the number 1-ranked tennis player in the country in my Intro Micro Econ class (good B+ student, very busy, intimidated many of the men students without being in the least bit intimidating).

[gh]

13-6 in '52 would have been national-class; I haven't dug up the U.S. list yet, but the January '53 edition has the world list and it goes 56-deep to
13-7 3/8.

[tandfman]

In 1952, 13-9 was the winning height in the NCAA Championships and 13-6 got you a tie for 6th. None of the vaulters who cleared those heights were from small schools.

[dr ngo]

At the same time . . .

The NAIA in 1952 was won at 13'6" by a vaulter from Abilene Christian (where, as it happens, the meet was held). In 1953 the winning height (by a guy from Fort Hays State, Kansas) was 13'3"! The first vaulter over 14' in the championship meet seems to have been the aforementioned Bob Gutowski (Oxy) in 1956. All of which confirms that 13'6" was excellent by small college standards (as well as good by "national" standards, as per GH).

On a related topic, given the costs of transportation and the low revenues from track, it seems likely that many "small college" athletes would have competed in the NAIA rather than the NCAA, but not both unless (1) they were exceptionally good [likely to win], and/or (2) the NCAA meet was close to home. So the absence of small college athletes from among NCAA medallists is not necessarily indicative of their insignificance.

As for Oxy being a "special case" in track in the 1950s-60s: yes, it certainly was! Actually beat Stanford and UCLA in track sometimes; even competitive with powerhouse USC. (And won the NAIA three times in a row, 1956-58.) But the fact remains that it was a small college (ca. 1400 students), with no athletic scholarships as such, and to that extent falls within the purview of the original question, I feel. ("A small Christian college for very small Christians," we called it.) It seems, from my hardly unbiassed perspective, a shame that no small college can reasonably aspire to such competitiveness nowadays.

[larry-arrington]

Thanks for Your Help

I apologize for not posting for a while, especially since I asked the original question. I stopped getting the email notices that additional postings were waiting to be read.

Thanks very much for the information. I have always considered the 13'6" height to be exceptional in 1952-in particular since the vaulter attended a school of some 450 students at the time. I am a little irked at the College for not putting him into their Athletic Hall of Fame because I think he was an outstanding athlete. He vaulted in the old Washington Evening Star Games (and in Madison Square Garden) against people like Laz and Richards. Now he couldn't compete well with that group of 15-footers, but he wasn't very far behind them. Those were the days when bamboo poles were still being used by vaulters. And then came Swedish Steel poles, a bit better but nothing like what was used in later years. And the pits, especially at a small college, were just filled with sawdust. That must have hurt when you were falling from 13-15 feet. Also, small colleges in 1952, especially Roanoke, couldn't afford to send an individual athlete to national championships (I assume that there was a national championship for all small schools at that time).

I am re-assured by your responses. My trouble in trying to compare him with other jumpers from similar-size schools is that even if I could contact each of the many conferences in the country, most affiliations have changed. I know that Roanoke, for example, has been in a number of conferences over the years - and many of those conferences are no longer around. And there is a dearth of records from 50-60 years back.

Again, thanks. Hope to hear from more people in the next few days.

Larry

[dj]

Re: Thanks for Your Help

Also, small colleges in 1952, especially Roanoke, couldn't afford to send an individual athlete to national championships (I assume that there was a national championship for all small schools at that time).Larry

There was not a separate national meet for small colleges (other than junior colleges) until 1952 when the first NAIA track championships was held. The NCAA college division meet started in 1963. The NCAA later split that meet in two, with the Division III track championships starting in 1974.

The NAIA should not necessarily be construed as only a "small college" meet, as there were some large schools among the participants.

[larry-arrington]

Comparison of Small College Jumpers

I just found an old copy of the Official NCAA Guide: Track and Field - 1949. The book, among other things, gives the results of each conference in the nation for the 1949 season.

I wonder if anyone might have the book for 1952. That might be a good way to compare a 13'6" jump at Roanoke College with the heights that were jumped in other conferences around the U. S.that year.

Or should I ask the NCAA staff?

Thanks again for your help.

Larry

[tandfman]

I have the NCAA Guides for those years. I'll pull some information from them, probably over the weekend unless someone has time to do it sooner. Are you looking for results from the 1952 season? I believe they would be in the 1953 Guide. I've got it.

[larry-arrington]

Thanks

Yes, I would be interested in knowing the winning pole vault heights for 1952 in some of the conference championship meets around the U. S. that had "small schools" participating.

In the Mason-Dixon Conference in those days (the conference Roanoke College was part of), I am guessing that the school enrollments ranged from a low of 500 to a high of 2,000-3,000. Some of the smaller schools would have been Roanoke College, Bridgewater College, Washington College, Randolph-Macon College, etc. Larger schools included American University, Johns Hopkins University, Catholic University, etc.

I don't suppose that the old copies of the guide could be found anywhere for sale. If not, that's a shame. There seemed to be a lot of information in the 1949 publication I saw.

Thanks very much for your help.

Larry

[gh]

"The East"

IC4A 13-3
Heps 14-0
New Englands 13-6
Eastern Intercollegiate 12-0
Yankee Conf. 13-0
Mets 13-2
Mid-Atlantic 12-6 3/4
Penn State Teachers 11-6
Penn Relays 13-0
Seton Hall Relays 13-2