Mount Si graduate writes track team’s splendid history

Published 12:34 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE – When Howie Adcox sees the new track installed at Mount Si High School in the coming years, he will know just how far the track team has come.

Adcox, who used to live right across the street from the high school, remembered watching the track team run laps on a worn path. The path went around four tires placed in a field that were spaced at the best approximation coaches could come up with for official distance.

When Adcox went to Mount Si High School and joined the track team, he competed in the high jump. Rather than land on a soft cushion of foam as today’s athletes do, Adcox and his teammates would land in a pile of sawdust.

“You had to land on your hands or else you would just kind of ‘thump,'” he said. “We had a lot of fun, though. That’s what I remember. Having a lot of fun.”

Those were some of the memories shared when about 60 past members of the Mount Si High School track team met recently for a reunion.

The reunion was organized by a teammate of Adcox’s named Paul Scovel, who graduated with Adcox in 1969. Scovel was at a barbecue when someone pulled out a book about the 2000 team. It reminded Scovel of his own days in track at Mount Si when, despite Spartan facilities, the school managed to routinely produce good teams with many athletes who competed at state championships.

He started to gather information and stories about past team members in the track program to put together a book of his own. The project started out small but swelled to hundreds of pages. It had to be divided into a 270-page boys’ and a 170-page girls’ volume. In all, Scovel found that 1,300 or so athletes had gone through the Mount Si High School track program.

“It’s just amazing to see the talent that has gone there through the years,” he said.

Despite having the poorest facility in the league, Mount Si High School regularly put out exceptional athletes. Scovel was happy to see that some of the records he and some of his teammates set at the school still stand.

For the complete story, pick up a copy of this week’s Valley Record