Bad Shoes

(Un-posting and re-posting in an attempt to foil a comment spammer who has been bedeviling me for a couple years.)

In the fall of 1970 a Coe College football player, John Quigley, challenged the coach’s authority to dictate his hair length. The school president did not support the coach’s position. In an act of solidarity all of the coaches at Coe resigned at the end of the school year. And so it came to be that we had a new cross country coach in the fall of 1971 as I began my second year at Coe.

Cross country wasn’t a major sport back then. It still isn’t. It was typical for a coach of one of the major winter or spring sports to be “stuck” with coaching cross country in the fall. Marcus Jackson, the new basketball coach, got stuck with coaching the cross country team. There are a hundred good things to say about Coach Jackson as a man and a coach, none of which makes a good story. What does make a good story was his lack of knowledge about cross country.

Though Coe was a NCAA Division III school, Coach was allowed to purchase necessary equipment for the team. Running shoes qualified as equipment. One day Coach proudly showed up at practice with new shoes for the entire team. At first we were thrilled. Then we found out the shoes were Beta Bullets. We were dismayed.

Nobody ran in Beta Bullets. None of us had ever heard of Beta Bullets! Anybody who knew the least little bit about cross country or track knew that the only respectable running shoes in 1971 were made by Puma or Adidas. Even with “good” shoes in those ancient times we had to take extra steps to keep them from tearing our feet to bloody shreds. We had to spray our feet with a form of glue called “tough skin”, and then powder the glue so it did not stick to the sock. Nike Waffle trainers, the first decent running shoe in the history of the planet, would not be invented until 1974.

We tried for several days to give the shoes a chance, but they ripped our feet to shreds. When my classmate, Modracek, finished a run with his sock soaked in blood and unable to walk, it was clear that something had to be done. Someone had to talk to the coach. I hoped it was anybody but me, or better yet, a committee.

We had five sophomores on the team: Miller, Ottsen, Robertson, Modracek, and me. The rest were freshmen. I don’t remember how we went about meeting as a team without the coach knowing about it. I assume we talked one afternoon during the warm-up or warm-down for the workout. A victim was selected to talk to the coach on behalf of the team. I was the victim.

I was 19 years old in an era when kids are supposed to be seen and not heard. When a coach said “jump” we had all been taught to ask “How high?” on our way up. In my mind what I was about to say was treason, mutiny, insurrection, rebellion, and sedition, and might get me kicked off the team. This was also back in the day of racial tension and riots in Watts, Newark, and Kansas City. Coach Jackson was a young (he seemed old to us) black man, and I, as a young lily white kid from lily white Iowa, was very much intimidated.

I talked to the coach about how none of us had ever run in Beta Bullets before, didn’t know anyone who did run in Beta Bullets, had never heard of Beta Bullets, and what they were doing to our feet. I explained that all serious runners were either wearing Puma or Adidas shoes. I said that just as Converse All Stars were THE shoe for serious basketball players, Pumas and Adidas were THE shoes for serious runners. To wear anything else was the sign of a rookie coach, rookie runners, or both. We would be the subject of derision if we wore Beta Bullets. More importantly, our workout efforts, and future racing efforts, would be hampered by the shoes.

Coach listened with a serious expression and furrowed brow that was scaring me to death. He positively scowled. In truth, he rarely smiled anyway. I wondered if these were my last moments on the planet. I wondered if he was about to rip into me for my audacity, and the team’s audacity, to question his shoe selection. Instead he asked me where he could find some Puma and Adidas shoes. I told him that the small community of distance runners in Cedar Rapids actively shared information on decent running shoes, and Eby’s Sporting Goods on First Avenue was the only store in the city or the county that carried a token few pairs of running shoes made by Puma or Adidas.

Coach said, “Let’s go.” In a moment of great eloquence I displayed my intelligence by saying, “Huh?” He stands up and says again, “Let’s go. You just made a case that the shoes we need are Puma or Adidas. You said that those shoes are at Eby’s. You said that I don’t know the right shoes for running and you clearly do. You are going to pick out running shoes for the entire team.” At which point I am thinking “Oh Crap!” I am not the coach. I am just a kid. I generally know what shoes I want, but I don’t want the responsibility of picking shoes for the entire team!

Coach was not a man to be put off. We immediately went out to the parking lot, got in his car and headed to Eby’s Sporting Goods. He hovered over me as I looked at this shoe and that shoe (there weren’t many running shoes in those days), and generally dithered and fretted whether the guys would agree with my choice. Eventually I picked a shoe, and we bought a pair for every guy on the team.

I recently had an email exchange with Trimble, who was a freshman at the time and now is in the Coe College Athletic Hall of Fame. Ed said, “That is a neat story about the shoes. I recall being very surprised to open a box and find these very cool Adidas that were just my size. Ya done good! I don’t remember the rest of the story, but you were our leader so that makes sense.”

Those are kind words, but as Forrest Gump says, “I don’t know anything about that.” I do know that the responsibility weighed heavily on me at the time. I dodged another bullet, so to speak; a Beta Bullet.