The Story of USC Track and Field
June 21, 1999 | Track & Field
USC is well known as one of the most successful athletic programs in the history of the NCAA, with 82 men's and women's national championships. The Trojans have won far more NCAA team and individual titles combined than any other university. However, the most dominant force in USC's slate of athletic programs is not the baseball team (11 College World Series titles) or the football squad (eight national championships) but the men's track and field program, with an unprecedented 28 NCAA titles (including nine straight, 1935-43).
Trojan athletes have dominated the track and field scene for decades. From the exploits of sprinter Charlie Paddock and thrower Clarence "Bud" Houser in the 1920s and 1930s, sprinter Mel Patton in the 1940s, thrower Parry O'Brien in the 1950s,sprinter Lennox Miller and pole vaulter Bob Seagren in the 1960s, sprinter Quincy Watts in the 1980s and continuing on to four-time NCAA hammer champion Balazs Kiss (only the fifth collegian to win four in a row) in the 1990s, USC is synonymous with track and field excellence.
THE CROMWELL YEARS:
1909-1948
The roots of Troy's preeminence date back to 1926, when coach Dean Cromwell brought the first NCAA track and field championship to USC. Cromwell, who led the Trojans from 1909-48, also served as head coach of the football team for five seasons. However, the foundation he laid was not on the gridiron but the cinderpaths. Cromwell's track squads won 12 NCAA championships and featured 34 NCAA individual champions. In addition, Cromwell was unanimously selected as head coach of the victorious 1948 U.S. Olympic team, a group which featured five Trojans (Mel Patton, Bob Chambers, Roland Sink, Wilbur Thompson and Cliff Bourland). In fact, Patton, Thompson and Bourland brought home gold medals in their respective events from London, the Olympic site.
From 1935-43, USC experienced a streak of unequalled track and field success. No other university has come close to matching Troy's string of nine consecutive NCAA championships, all under Cromwell's watchful eye. Nicknamed the "Maker of Champions," he fashioned Trojan athletes into a powerhouse. At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, USC trackmen scored enough points (37 1/2) to have finished among the top five in the world. Cromwell's influence extended far beyond the USC campus to the corners of the world. He personally tutored champions in every Olympic Games from 1912 to 1948, and upon his retirement in 1949, "The Dean" remained involved as a regular figure in various Southland sporting events until his death in 1962.
TWO JESSES,
NINE NATIONAL TITLES:
1949-1961
Jess Hill and Jess Mortensen, both integral parts of USC's proud athletic heritage, carried the track and field torch after Cromwell's retirement. Both men are still considered among the finest all-around athletes in USC history, and their accomplishments did not end after their playing days were over.
Hill, who lettered in three sports at USC (football, baseball and track), served as head coach of Troy's track and field program in 1949 and 1950, leading the Trojans to an undefeated season and national championship in both seasons. From 1951-56, Hill coached the football team, and in 1957, he began his tenure as USC athletic director, a position he held until 1972.
Mortensen's reign at USC also began as an undergraduate. The talented athlete lettered in track, basketball and football, winning the NCAA javelin title as a junior. After a 14-year coaching stint at Riverside Junior College, he returned to become coach of the Trojan track and field team in 1951, leading Troy to seven NCAA championships in his 11-year tenure. Mortensen's Trojan teams never lost a dual meet, going 79-0 between 1951 and 1961. He developed some of Troy's best-known trackmen, including Parry O'Brien and Max Truex. Sadly, "Mort" died suddenly at the age of 54 from complications caused by a blood clot. Hill, his longtime friend and teammate, stepped in as interim head coach for the 1962 season, and a new chapter in Trojan track and field history was about to begin.
THE WOLFE YEARS:
1963-1984
The prospect of succeeding three consecutive coaching legends would be a difficult task for anyone, but Vern Wolfe answered the challenge.
During his 21 years at the helm of the Trojan track and field program, USC captured five outdoor NCAA championships, including back-to-back titles in 1967 and 1968. A former pole vaulter for Cromwell's Trojan teams, Wolfe also won indoor titles in 1967 and 1972. At the time of his retirement in 1984, he was the third-winningest coach in U.S. track history, all despite reductions in scholarships and the lack of a top-flight on-campus facility.
Wolfe, who competed in senior events as a pole vaulter, attacked all problems with a straight-ahead approach. He continued to win throughout his career and towards the end oversaw the modernization of Cromwell Field, USC's track facility which served as a training site for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. And so, after 21 years on the job, Wolfe retired and gave way to Ernie Bullard.
BULLARD AND BUSH:
1985-94
Another in the line of former Trojan athletes to become head coaches at USC, Ernie Bullard came to Troy from San Jose State, where he helped build the Spartans into a national contender. It didn't take long for Bullard to continue Troy's winning ways, recruiting athletes like sprinter Quincy Watts, a two-time gold medalist at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
Jim Bush was the man picked to replace longtime friend Bullard in 1991. After all, who better to rebuild the USC program than the man who guided UCLA to five national championships?
Bush helped stabilize the program and recruited some of Troy's stars, like Balazs Kiss of Hungary, the 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996 NCAA champion in the hammer throw. Consequently, he helped lay the foundation for the latest in the distinguished line of Trojan head track coaches: Ron Allice.
RON ALLICE,
THE NEW ERA: 1995 -
Ron Allice, who prior to the 1995 season was named head coach for USC's combined men's and women's program, is no stranger to success. He has distinguished himself at every level of competition, all in the Southland, and is well-known not only as a master builder, but a man who can keep a program at the highest level year after year.
Allice came to Troy with impeccable credentials: 11 state championships in 16 years at Long Beach (Calif.) City College (including conference championships all 16 years). He quickly went to work, guiding the USC men's team to a fourth-place finish at the 1995 NCAA Championships. In 1996, his Women of Troy won their first-ever Pac-10 title. Last season, he led the Trojan men's team to its first Pac-10 title since 1977 and a third-place showing at the 1997 NCAAs. Allice has a dual meet career record of 156-26-1 at five schools, and he has coached more than 200 All-Americans, 16 Olympians, four world record holders and seven American record holders. His 1980 Long Beach City College squad was called "the best junior college team in history" by Track and Field News, and during his tenure at LBCC, his teams lost just one dual meet.
Allice takes the storied history of USC track and field very seriously.
"I have a mandate to bring this program to its rightful place," he said. "This university is a special place to us all, and we are ready to add another chapter to USC's illustrious history."
Now ready to return to the heights of athletic achievement, USC track and field, as has been the case for nearly a century, is in good hands.
