A Juxtaposition of Several Memes

Any semi-intelligent reader of this blog (there are a few!) may have detected a few memes over the past several years.  Among them are:

• Steve Prefontaine
• Greg Fredericks
• Running Streaks
• Colleges that have lost their track teams
• Coach Groves' former team,  William and Mary

Well, all of these come together in this blog post from Steve Taylor, a former runner for the Richmond Spiders. Remember, Richmond lost its Men's team a few years ago, a trend that really infuriates me.  In digging through the archives of other alums, Steve came across these 2 photos.

They happen to show Steve Prefontaine winning the 1970 NCAA XC Championship on William and Mary's home course, probably a course set up by Coach Harry Groves.*  I ran that course in 1977 the day after 1/2 of Lynyrd Skynyrd died in a plane crash.  

In the results of the race, I noticed two names that made me smile. In 4th place was our very own Greg Fredericks two places behind Donal Walsh from Villanova.  (That was the opposite of this race in 1968):

Photo courtesy of runmoremiles.com

And in 16th place that year was Cal State Fullerton's Mark Covert who had been running every day for two years then.  Well, he still hasn't missed a day since then and will officially end his streak in July of this year at 45 years, without missing a day.  His right foot has finally collapsed and he will switch to biking at that time.

 1. Steve Prefontaine, Oregon 28:00
 2. Donal Walsh, Villanova 28:08
 4. Greg Fredericks, Penn State 28:12
16. Mark Covert, Cal State Fullerton 28:48

Addendum  (with emphasis on "dumb" on my part, again.): 

Steve Taylor is coach at Richmond - he was an All-American XC and track guy at VA Tech '83-'88. The W&M course you ran on (and I raced on) appears not to be the 1970 NCAA course, according to wife of 25th place finisher, Ron Martin: (Margaret Ann Martin) "That race was run at what is now Kingsmill. I think it was the last race run there before construction of the community was started. Ron (25th place) was just a freshman. When he told his mom in England he had made All American, she thought he had changed his citizenship!! Ron ran against Pre in another race: the 3 mile at NCAA Champs in Baton Rouge. 1973, i think. There was a picture of several of the finishers in TFN, including Ron and Pre, cooling off in the steeplechase water jump."

*I'm not positive on what course was used, but Coach Groves had to have had something to do with it!