I must have been napping. But I failed in February to mark the 10th anniversary of mastershistory.org — our worldwide geezertrack museum. This year’s updates have been slim, however, since we’ve exhausted the Al Sheahen archive. So now we’re launching an effort to crowd-source materials from others. Masters History subcommittee chair Jeff Davison recently visited national masters chair Rex Harvey in Arizona, who is making available some of his papers, including newsletters of the Over The Hill Track Club in Ohio.

And yet some basic materials are still missing. For example, USATF Masters T&F Records czar Jeff Brower needs complete original meet results from masters nationals — not the abbreviated results published in National Masters News.

Jeff writes: “Athletes used to receive a booklet weeks/months after the national meet with all the results, and this is what I’m looking for. But I’m looking for older meets (70s, 80s, 90s, maybe some in the 2000s). I’m looking to get this for several reasons, but one of the main reasons is to rescore combined events, which can’t be done unless EACH mark in the combined event was recorded.”

Jeff says he’s occasionally run into an old-timer who kept documents like this, and so have I. So we’d like to hear from any decathlete/heptathlete who happens to have the original results booklet or news blast giving marks in each event from back in the day. Let me know, and I’ll put you in touch with Jeff.

Also: If you have ANY printed material related to masters track — club newsletters, results not already posted — we’d like to see it. Jeff Davison’s committee has a budget, and we could pay for shipping and scanning of these materials.

Spokane was the 50th anniversary of our national masters meet (held in San Diego from 1968 to 1973), and our youngest original entrants are fading from the scene. Now’s the time to preserve their records and memories.

Thankee!

Contribute to support independent track and field journalism: