'I'd say we did pretty good'

Del Nichols gave his English class an idea one day. In return, they nearly gave him – and Arlington High School – a league championship. "I was doing my student teaching out there when one of the boys in my English class said, 'Hey, my dad says you were a heck of a track man,'" Nichols recalled. "I told him that, in 1958, I did win four gold medals in the Mid-Ohio track meet, and set two meet records doing it. He said, 'I wish we had a track team.' So I said, 'Well, why don't you guys start one?' "That's how it started. We went around to see how many guys would come out, talked to as many kids as we could, and that's how we got a team together that first year." Roughly two months later, on the eve of the 1961 Hancock County track meet, that rag-tag band of athletes, most wearing mismatched uniforms and tennies, went into the final event of the night on the verge of bringing home the championship trophy. Alas, it was not to be. Arlington had compiled 66 points heading into the mile relay. Van Buren was in first place with 69. Had Arlington won that event – and Van Buren finished no better than third — the Red Devils would have won a share of the Hancock County title in their first year of competition. Van Buren would finish first in the mile relay, with Ray Amos, Gary Taylor, Doug McCracken and Pete Potteiger winning in a meet record time of 3:56.2. Arlington was third, securing its runner-up placing in its first-ever year of track. Records do not indicate if Arlington ever won a Hancock County track title. A few years after Arlington started its team, area schools were reconfigured into the Blanchard Valley Conference, and when it comes to track and field Liberty-Benton has been king of the hill in that department. In the 54 years the BVC meet has been held, L-B has won 34 girls titles and 31 boys crowns. The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 BVC meet. But schools are back in session, spring sports are back on the field and Liberty-Benton is again the favorite to defend its title when the BVC meet gets under way Friday (May 14) at Liberty-Benton. Tracks today, the like the one at Liberty-Benton and the Cooper Tire and Rubber Track and Field Complex at Findlay High, are state-of-the-art beauties. Cushiony, synthetic surfaces; well-lit, clearly-marked lanes; electronic timing to chronologically record the placement of runners to the thousandth of a second. It wasn't always so. Only six schools – Van Buren, Arlington, Vanlue, Cory-Rawson, Liberty-Benton and Arcadia – competed in the Hancock County meet in 1961. McComb also took part, but did not field a full team. The meet – just boys, no girls teams yet – was held at Findlay College on a cinder track behind Croy Gymnasium that Dave Davis, who won the 100-yard dash in 10.65 seconds and set a meet record time of 24.45 in winning 220-yard dash, swears was not level. The fact Arlington even had a team competing, let alone in the running for the meet championship, was unprecedented. But one look at the team photo of that 1961 group – Nichols and a student trainer on one side, a volunteer coach whose name he cannot remember on the other, and 23 smiling teenagers – most in t-shirts and shorts; none in matching uniforms; Davis trying to corral a beagle-ish stray dog named Stranger that the team adopted as its team mascot – and the memories come quickly flooding back. "Word of mouth, that's how we got started," Nichols said. "Arlington never had a track team before. They didn't have a track, so for training we ran around the football field. As for equipment, I was able to borrow two hurdles from my old high school (Columbus Grove). It was the darnedest thing you ever saw watching those kids working out with just two hurdles. But those kids were competitive. They were good kids, and good athletes. You don't always find too many like that at one school, but Docky Castor was the football coach then and he had some hellishly good football teams back in that era. Those kids, they would work for you." Equipment wasn't the only thing hard to come by. "I went around to everybody I knew who had track asking for anything: tops, shorts, shoes …" Nichols said. "We got all kinds, orange and blues and greens … we ended up with about eight different color jerseys. When we ran a relay it was hard to tell who was on our team because all the jerseys were so different." Though Nichols, who was allowed to student teach at Arlington after just two years of college, was new to coaching, he had the kind of drive and work ethic that fit in well with the new program. A four-sport athlete at Columbus Grove, Nichols was a part of eight Northwest Conference championship teams, two each in football, basketball, baseball and track his junior and senior years. His senior year, he was third in the state track meet in the high hurdles. Nichols continued to excel in athletics at Bluffton College, but that came with sacrifices as well. "I'd get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, have breakfast, drive over to Bluffton College and from 7 to 9 I was a janitor in the chemistry building," Nichols said. "I came from a real poor farm family. My dad couldn't give me any money for college, so I worked two or three part-time jobs. "When you're poor, you do anything you can, you know, and that's what I did to help pay my tuition." Competing for the Bluffton College track team, Nichols won the high and low hurdles, the pole vault and the high jump at the Mid-Ohio Track Meet, setting meet records in two of the events. He also played football, and was a teammate of Elbert Dubenion, who later went on to a lengthy career with the Buffalo Bills. While Dubenion was the big name on the Beavers' roster, Nichols was carving a niche of his own. "I ran back punts and kickoffs. I did the punting and played free safety," Nichols said. "Our coach, Kenny Mast, he said I was his crazy man because anything he could dream up, he'd send me in and I'd go try it." Some might have considered Nichols crazy for trying to start a track program where had existed before. But the interest was there, the timing was right, and competing in the Hancock County meet became a realistic goal. "We competed in three meets before the league meet: one at Pandora, one at Columbus Grove and one at, I think, Van Buren. A lot of schools didn't have their own track, but those schools did," Nichols said. "At first, the kids didn't even know the order of events, so they had to learn where to be for field events and relays and such. The uniforms didn't match, and we were able to dig up some track shoes but a lot of times they didn't fit so the kids just ran in their tennis shoes. "There was one coach we kept running into at these meets. He said, 'You guys are always talking about getting in the league meet, but you never have.' "Well, that year we showed up." And darned near won it all. Davis swept the sprints winning the 100-yard dash in 10.65 seconds and the 220 in a meet record time of 24.45. He ran both races in his tennies, and admitted he had a bit of incentive in the 220. "If you had track shoes, they were borrowed. But the ones they found me didn't fit right so I didn't wear them," Davis said. "It was a cinder track there on the Findlay College campus. I swear the 220 was not level, but I ran as fast as I could because there was a big guy from Vanlue, I think his name was Fred Phillips, and he was pushing me all the way." Darrol Jameson won the 120 high hurdles (17.8) and Jim Hulbert the 160 lows (19.85). Lanny Dillon set a meet record of 40 feet, 1-1/2 inches in winning the shot put, and Donnie Essinger tied Van Buren's Gene Wolf for first place in the high jump at 5-3. "Darrol Jameson was a great athlete back then. He was my hurdler; he could do anything," Nichols said. "Lanny Dillon, a great big kid, was our shot put and discus thrower. Dave Davis in the sprints, Ronnie and Donnie Essinger running relays … "Ron Wolford was my distance runner. He had a pair of track shoes, but in one of his races, the mile or the half mile, he was running up near the front when one of those dang spikes broke off and stuck in his foot. He finished the race, though. He had a bloody foot, but he wasn't going to give up. That's the way he was. That's how all of those kids were. "We probably didn't look like much. Our uniforms didn't match and we had to borrow just about anything we had. But we had quite a crew and, darned, those kids were competitive. "It all came down to that final event, the mile relay. They (Van Buren) won it, we were third. If it'd been the other way around we could have won the whole dang meet. "For that being our first year, though, for me and the kids, I'd say we did pretty good."