168St EngineersArmoryNYC 1964-78

Mike Keogh, Vince Cartier, Joe Savage, Bill Sieben, Skeets Nehemiah, Denis Fikes...

And what a floor it was! Did you race there when it was a rough, splintery surface? It wasn't polished like a basketball court. Any unfortunate kid who took a tumble was picking splinters out of his arms and legs for weeks.

Splinters removed and stitches received as a frosh at Columbia across the street- still remember the beautiful redheaded nurse who worked on me- I suspect my penchant for flameheads started that day.

Officials hazard- starting races from the chute under the overhang (besides the roachcoach venders not so hot hot dogs!!) gave me permanant hearing loss- How did John Quigley

and Bill Carr do it for all those years?

God awful floor. Even worse were the bathrooms. Open stalls!

oldBOY wrote:

Mike Keogh, Vince Cartier, Joe Savage, Bill Sieben, Skeets Nehemiah, Denis Fikes...

When adding guys from across the river you must include the guitar playing Marty Liquori to the list. Plus the above mentioned John Quigley held the flat floor 440 record for like 40 years.

Two time NYC Marathon winner Tom Fleming ran a bit on the boards I believe.

Cheryl Toussaint and Diane Dixon also fit into that time frame.

Bill Dabney, Julio Piazza, Marty Walsh, Walter Wall, Mike Sands, Bill McClellon, Mike Phipps . . .

Transfered from Brooklyn Tech to run for Marty Lewis at Commerce, not that our 1:27 team needed any help from this (HS Best 24.0h /23.5relay ) slow sprinter.

Vernell Turner was one of the guns on my team is now coaching at Midwood.

I think the wooden floors were there after 1978 as well, or was there a different wooden floor after 1978? I ran MAC indoor meets there on a wooden flat track there after 1978, probably in the early 80s but my memory of it isn't great.

My cut off date was fiat. Boards ended in 1986/7(?)

Yeah, it was a wooden floor much later than that...I ran up there in 1983 or 1984.

how about those Lincoln sprint relays? Can't remember all the names, but man they were fun to watch.

I think you mean Madison, not Midwood. What year(s) were you at Tech?

wineturtle wrote:

Transfered from Brooklyn Tech to run for Marty Lewis at Commerce, not that our 1:27 team needed any help from this (HS Best 24.0h /23.5relay ) slow sprinter.

Vernell Turner was one of the guns on my team is now coaching at Midwood.

Yeah he is at James Madison, I was at all boys BTHS in 1959-60

Ed(?) Weiss was coach foul old man, to call him a crumudgeon would understate, with serious bad breath worse than the stubb of a cigar he always had in is mouth.

I do not think he hadany open runners on the team - you a Tech kid?

Sheepshead Bay, late 60s. We were always second, third, or fourth in XC and Tech was always first. Ed Zarowin was the coach then. He must have known what he was doing, because the long distance guys were always good and they had great depth year after year.

Montesquieu wrote:

Sheepshead Bay, late 60s. We were always second, third, or fourth in XC and Tech was always first. Ed Zarowin was the coach then. He must have known what he was doing, because the long distance guys were always good and they had great depth year after year.

Ed was a very good coach, nice guy also but all business. did you cross paths with Marc Bloom? I also knew a gal who went there in the 60's Patti Brenner.

I've known Marc for over forty years now (yikes!). In the late 60s and early 70s he'd drag me around with him to various meets, so through him I got to meet some pretty neat and interesting characters (including, on one end of the spectrum, Marty Lewis), and contribute to his publications. "Mr. Z"--I think that's what the kids called him--was very serious, just as you say. And the runners I remember--Piazza, Fred Levine, Bill Corcoran--were uniformly good guys.

Going to Reebok@Ican? PM me on Dye or T&FN.

I can't believe that after 18 posts, no mention of the kid who should have been named in the very first post - Pete Gaughn.

Good memories here. I HJ'ed at a # of All Comers meets there in the early 60's.