Reunion for runners

Always keep in contact with at least one teammate.

That’s the advice the late Coach Byron David “Doc” Stiles and Marv Smith gave to Iola High School’s cross country members before each meet.

It’s advice the 1969 state championship team took to heart — at competitions and beyond. For five decades, the team has kept in contact.

They’ll meet this weekend to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Iola’s first and only state cross country championship. They met Friday evening at Rookie’s. Today, they’ll walk through the Farm-City Days parade, pulling and pushing Smith’s classic green truck as per the cross country team’s tradition.

“There’s a tendency to think of cross country as an individual sport, but it’s really about the team,” Smith said.

Cross country’s scoring system places a value on each member of the team. It’s a sport that starts during the hottest days of the summer and ends in the fall, with members wearing stocking caps and sweats.

“The degree of difficulty of those practices and meets really welds those kids into a unit,” Smith said. “It’s hard to find distance runners. This 1969 team just gelled from the beginning.”

Iolan Randy Latta, a member of the 1969 championship team, said his best memories came from working as a team.

“I don’t care what sport it is, you’ve got to work together,” he said. “We’re all one.”

IF YOU have a chance to talk to some of the 1969 cross country team members, keep things in perspective. As Steve Strickler, a member of that team, warns: “The stories get embellished tremendously through the years.”

Strickler recapped the winning season in a news article in 1999, in honor of the team’s 30-year reunion. That year, a reunion for the runners included an alumni run for all former cross country members and their family members.

“We went out and ‘ran’ — and that should be put in quotes,” Strickler joked. He only runs now “to the dinner table or if I have a bull chasing me.”

Don’t expect to see a memorial run this year, he added. Now that team members are in their mid- to late-60s, some of them have had a knees and hips replaced.

And if you do talk to team members this weekend, you’re likely to hear different takes on a few key events.

They’ll talk about traveling to meets in the back of Doc’s pickup, which was covered by a camper shell.

They’ll talk about the time the team split up to win two meets in two cities on the same day.