Culver hurdlers competing at Harvard in 1926.
Looking Back
“It has been a glorious season!”
A season from a century ago remains the gold standard for the Culver track and field team.
Culver Military Academy track fans in 1922 could hardly imagine a greater moment than watching future Olympian William “Beef” Richardson 1922 likely become the first American high school athlete to break the two-minute half-mile barrier shortly after running a 51.4 in the 440, both believed to be national records, in a triangular telegraphic meet with Kemper Military Institute in Tennessee and Shattuck Military Academy.
Yet only four years later, the 1926 squad delivered what is likely the greatest season in Culver track and field history.
The Culver cinder-flingers finished their dual meet season undefeated despite what The Vedette described as “the hardest schedule in Culver track history.” Among the teams they beat were Notre Dame’s and Butler’s freshmen teams and Kokomo, the Indiana state champions. It was an impressive feat, but fairly commonplace back in the day. The Eagles also were undefeated in dual meets in 1902, 1916, 1917 and 1923.
The Cadets won the University of Wisconsin Interscholastic Relays, a meet that featured the best Midwestern prep school competition around, placed second only to Andover at the Harvard Invitational among 40 elite Eastern prep schools, and later finished runner-up again at the Stagg Invitational in Chicago, where more than 30 Western and Midwestern prep schools vied for the mythical “Championship of the West.”
The team literally set records every time it ran. By season’s end, nine school records had fallen.
They were led by hurdler Richard “Dick” Rockaway 1926, a future world-record holder in the 220-yards hurdles, who swept both hurdle events at every meet and broke all Culver hurdling marks indoors and outdoors.
By the end of his high school career, he had lowered his own record time in the high hurdles to 16 seconds flat and his time in the lows to 25.4. He later set a world record in the low hurdles (22.8) in 1929 and became one of the first men to break 15 seconds in the highs.
High jumper Richard Callender 1926 set a remarkable school indoor record of 6 foot 3 inches, breaking the Wisconsin Relays record by 5 inches. This happened to set a U.S. indoor record as well. That stood as a Culver record for 51 years until Pat Peters ’77 jumped 6'6.5" in 1977, which still stands.
Jerry Mayer 1926 broke the pole vault record three times, with a best of 11 feet 3 inches. The current record of 15'9" is held by George Bourdier ’22, set in 2022.
The 1926 Culver track team.
Junior Bill Knourek 1927 set a new indoor mark of 21 feet 5 inches in the long jump. (Current record: 22'10.5" by Eric Burns ’16 in 2016), Sophomore Tom Shankner threw the shot put 46 feet 8 inches, a record that stood for 11 years. (Current record: 57'2.5" by Greg Farrall ’88 in 1988), Andrew McGee 1926 lowered the indoor record for the 220-yard dash to 25.6 seconds. (Current record: 23.22 by Bourdier in 2022)
A half-mile relay team made of Knourek, McGee, Fred Froemke 1930 and Clark Pringle 1926 set a new Culver standard against Kokomo of 1:34.0. (Current record: 1:30.9 in 1976) And Phil Frink 1926 ran a school record of 4:31.8 mile at Harvard. (Current record for the 1600 meters is 4:17.37)
The Culver Builder, forerunner to the Culver Alumni Magazine, recounted the historic trip in its July 1926 issue: “When the reckoning were finished in the chill of that afternoon’s twilight, it was revealed that the lads from the prairies were taking back to the trophy hall of Culver Military Academy the silverware that betokens second place.”
Scores of the four high teams were: Andover 69.5, Culver 30, Exeter 21.5 and Milton Academy 11.5. Culver managed the feat while it had nine competitors and Andover had 44. There were more than 40 schools competing and 467 entrants. LeRoy Atkinson of the Boston Transcript wrote: “Directly after their arrival they posed, straight and tall, with true military bearing before a battery of newspaper and motion picture cameras that would have done justice to a party of international diplomats.”
In addition to Rockaway’s two first places in the hurdles, Mayer tied for first in the pole vault with a height of 11 feet, Knourek took second in the 220-yard dash in 24 seconds flat, Callender, who finished right behind Rockaway in the high hurdles, took a somewhat disappointing fourth in the high jump with a leap of 5'10" (a higher jump was ruled to be an illegal jump), Frank Turner 1926 took a fourth and fifth, respectively, in the high jump and the discus, Shankner managed a fifth in the shot put with a toss of 24'1/2", John “Jack” Rockaway finished fourth behind his brother in the low hurdles, and Frink ran one of the fastest times in Culver history (4:31.8) to finish fifth in the mile.
“The work of the Culver team was one of the surprises of the meet,” wrote Tom McCabe of The Boston Globe. “Culver Military Academy was heralded rather far and wide in its visit East; and, when all is said and done, the boys lived up to their reputation.”
Culver’s performances in Madison, Chicago, and especially Cambridge 100 years ago vaulted a Midwestern military academy onto the national stage. Newspapers from Boston to Chicago praised the discipline, poise and ability of the cadets. That season remains the gold standard for Culver.
The Vedette summed it up best: “It has been a glorious season!”