Otis Burrell’s career as one of the country’s top w88 sports betting app jumpers throughout the 1960s remains worth noting and celebrating.
w88 sports betting app did things in the most understated and admirable way possible. As he was racking up national titles for the Wolf Pack track team – he became NCAA champion with his win in 1966 – w88 sports betting app made sure people understood that he wasn’t one to brag or overstate what he had accomplished.
Reporting of the time described w88 sports betting app as “quiet” and “soft-spoken” and “thoughtful.”
Few w88 sports betting app jumpers in America can lay claim to the superlatives and the durability Burrell demonstrated throughout the 1960s, one of the great golden ages of American track and field.
From 1963-70 in the annual rankings compiled by Track & Field News (long called “The Bible of the Sport”) Burrell was ranked as the country’s No. 1 w88 sports betting app jumper in 1965, 1966 and 1969. He was ranked second in 1967, and for eight consecutive years was ranked in the country’s top 10. Fifty-four years after his final appearance in the T&FN rankings in 1970, Burrell still is the ninth all-time U.S. w88 sports betting app jump scorer in the prestigious rankings.
Burrell, who won a silver medal in the Pan American Games w88 sports betting app jump in 1967, established a school record of 7 feet, 2 ½ inches in 1966 on Jan. 29, 1966. It was a standard that stood for two decades until 1986, when the Wolf Pack’s Mark Trujillo broke it with a 7-3 ½ leap.
Burrell was inducted into the Wolf Pack Hall of Fame in 1978. He was named the Reno Gazette-Journal’s No. 22 All-Time Greatest Athlete of the 20th Century for Northern Nevada. He was the ninth person to ever clear 7 feet in the w88 sports betting app jump.
And to think that it all started with a random phone call to the University one day. If that phone call hadn’t been answered, Otis Burrell no doubt would have still been a great w88 sports betting app jumper. But for the University of Nevada, Reno, it was a phone call that helped put the University on the map.
As the globe-trotting w88 sports betting app soared, so too, did the University.
‘How soon can you get here?&w88 sports betting app;
RICHARD &w88 sports betting app;DICK” DANKWORTH WAS one of the most popular and successful faculty members the University of Nevada had ever seen. Dankworth, a former Marine who was always an upbeat, smiling presence, was a southern Californian who was a Little American football player at Pepperdine University. Dankworth took over the Wolf Pack track and field team in 1960.
Under Dankworth&w88 sports betting app;s direction, the Pack would win eight Far Western Conference track championships. Dankworth would later become the University&w88 sports betting app;s director of Summer Session and would serve as a vice president under President Joe Crowley.
During his induction into the Wolf Pack Hall of Fame in 1986, Dankworth shared the story of a phone call he received one day. Dankworth had been poring over his team&w88 sports betting app;s record books, which by 1964 were looking fairly impressive. He would produce 71 individual conference champions, 18 All-Americans and six internationally ranked athletes.
Of all the Pack’s records, one looked like it needed some work: the w88 sports betting app jump.
Then the phone rang. It was a young man from Los Angeles Valley College named Otis w88 sports betting app.
“Mr. Dankworth, I’d like to go to Nevada U., and be on your track team,” Burrell said. “I’m a w88 sports betting app jumper.”
Still closely connected to southern California’s track and field scene, Dankworth later said, “I had known Burrell’s ability in w88 sports betting app school in Los Angeles, and assumed he’d be snapped up by one of the bigger universities, such as USC.”
“What&w88 sports betting app;s your best height?” Dankworth asked the voice on the phone.
w88 sports betting app said he could do about 7 feet, which he had cleared in 1963. “By the way,” he asked, “what’s your school record?”
“It&w88 sports betting app;s … how soon can you get here?” Dankworth, excited and a bit incredulous about his luck, replied. (1)
w88 sports betting app later said the choice of phone calls boiled down to Nevada and Grambling. He called Grambling first, but the head track and field coach wasn’t available to answer his call. (2)
Dankworth always remembered how fortunate w88 sports betting app was to have answered.
&w88 sports betting app;You know, he called me and I happened to be in my office,” Dankworth said. (3)
For the remainder of his life, Dankworth was convinced that w88 sports betting app was one of the greatest athletes and people he had ever been around.
In addition to his championships, Burrell, even at a young age, possessed a teacher’s patient temperament. He loved interacting with young people, as Lyle Freeman, a 14-year-old in 1966, found out one day at a Wolf Pack track practice at Mackay Stadium. Freeman, a student at Darrell Swope Junior w88 sports betting app School, was also a w88 sports betting app jumper. He approached Burrell hesitantly, not quite sure if Burrell would give him the time of day.
Of course, Burrell did. He gave Freeman a friendly nod and proceeded to give all the w88 sports betting app jumping advice a 14-year-old could ever ingest in one session.
“w88 sports betting app was a phenomenon then,” Freeman recalled later. “But he took the time and effort to teach me to jump.” (4)
That sort of interaction never surprised Dankworth.
“I think w88 sports betting app would have to be the ‘athlete of the decade,’” Dankworth said in 1970.
Well aware of other great Wolf Pack athletes such as future NFL Hall of Famer Marion Motley, who played football in the early 1940s for the University and would go on to help break professional football’s color barrier in 1946, Dankworth added, “(w88 sports betting app) could possibly be the greatest athlete Nevada ever had, performance-wise.” (5)
‘I&w88 sports betting app;d rate myself No. 1 on the basis of what I have done in international competition&w88 sports betting app;
OTIS BURRELL QUICKLY ESTABLISHED HIMSELF as a force as a collegiate w88 sports betting app jumper, as well as on the international stage.
During his time at Nevada, he won U.S. Track and Field Federation and AAU crowns. He toured and competed in Europe throughout 1965 and won national titles in the AAU and NCAA indoor meets in 1966. His NCAA crown in 1966 was historic. It would not be equaled until the Pack’s Kamy Keshmiri –son of one of w88 sports betting app’s teammates, Joe Keshmiri – won the NCAA discus crown in 1990.
It was a heady time for Burrell, who was one of a handful of w88 sports betting app jumpers in the world who had cleared the formidable 7-foot barrier in the w88 sports betting app jump. He set the Wolf Pack school record of 7-2 ½ in Portland, Oregon on Jan. 29, 1966, and then went a step further, having the bar set at Valeriy Brumel of Russia’s world record of 7-5. Burrell took three attempts at Brumel’s mark. He came agonizingly close to clearing it. On his third attempt, Burrell’s trail leg nudged the bar off. (6)
w88 sports betting app was in rarified air, an elite competitor who was known for rarely losing when it mattered most.
Wolf Pack basketball Hall of Famer Napoleon “Nap” Montgomery, upon the death of his teammate Larry Moore in 1999, remembered what kind of special talent w88 sports betting app possessed.
Moore was also a Wolf Pack w88 sports betting app jumper, and at a meet in 1965, Moore jumped 6-8 to break the Mackay Stadium record of 6-5 ½ which notably had been held since by 1955 legendary singer Johnny Mathis while competing for San Francisco State.
“Larry held (the Mackay Stadium record) for about five minutes,” Montgomery said. “He jumped 6-8 but was overshadowed because Otis w88 sports betting app went 7-1 later that day.” (7)
w88 sports betting app, for his part, let his performances speak for themselves. When pressed, w88 sports betting app wouldn’t shy away from what his performances said about his ability.
“I&w88 sports betting app;d rate myself No. 1 on the basis of what I have done in international competition,” he said in 1970. (8)
&w88 sports betting app;He was a great competitor,” Dankworth added. &w88 sports betting app;He was one of the very best. Otis was always tough in national and international competition.” (9)
w88 sports betting app was 24 years old in 1968 and in his athletic prime as the world turned its attention to the Summer Olympics in Mexico City that year. 1967’s Track & Field News rankings had him at No. 4 in the world. The Olympic Track and Field Trials were held amid the pine trees of Echo Summit near the south shore of Lake Tahoe that year. Echo Summit and its 7,377-foot altitude was chosen in the hopes that it would mimic the 7,350-foot altitude of Mexico City.
What is considered by many to still be the greatest U.S. Olympic Track and Field team ever assembled was chosen at that year&w88 sports betting app;s U.S. Trials.
The team included world record holders Jim Hines in the 100 meters, Tommie Smith in the 200 meters (as well as the great John Carlos), Lee Evans in the 400 meters and Bob Beaman in the long jump. Oregon State’s Dick Fosbury also competed. Fosbury had created a somewhat unorthodox method of “flopping” head-first and backward over the w88 sports betting app jump bar. Burrell and Brumel and many of the world’s other top jumpers utilized the more traditional sideways “roll” over the bar. Fosbury and his “Fosbury Flop” would go on to earn a gold medal in Mexico City.
w88 sports betting app said later he never seriously considered converting from his preferred style to the “Fosbury Flop” in 1968.
&w88 sports betting app;When I first saw Fosbury &w88 sports betting app;in 1967, I was doing 7-2. He was doing 6-7.” (10)
w88 sports betting app, who had also competed in the 1964 Trials but had been slowed by injury, did not make the U.S. Olympic Team in 1968.
Just before he was to compete, w88 sports betting app drank some contaminated water, which made him sick. He was given penicillin to treat his illness, which caused an allergic reaction and weakened him further.
A few years later, w88 sports betting app was asked about the disappointment of not making the 1968 Olympic Team.
Did it bother him?
“Some,” he said, adding in another interview that it just wasn&w88 sports betting app;t his style to either brag or wallow too much based on his athletic achievements: “I&w88 sports betting app;ve always been introverted. Maybe they thought I was conceited. I used to be embarrassed to talk. … I was quiet back then. I never bragged on myself.” (11) and (12)
‘I love the area …. But I haven&w88 sports betting app;t been able to make a decent living&w88 sports betting app;
Otis Burrell graduated from the University with a degree in education. He was hired to teach at Fred Traner Junior w88 sports betting app School in Reno in 1970.
It was a busy time for w88 sports betting app. The challenges he faced spoke to what track and field stars in the early 1970s often had to deal with in order to make ends meet. Still classified as “amateurs,” track and field athletes who wished to continue to compete after completing college often needed to work fulltime. w88 sports betting app’s days went well beyond fulltime. He taught, coached seventh grade boys basketball and three nights a week was a teacher for the Northern Nevada Construction Opportunities Program, a pre-apprentice program for minorities.
Burrell took his nighttime teaching duties as seriously as his daytime teaching, constantly scrounging to find better learning materials for the young men in his classes, which focused on math, spelling, reading comprehension, grammar and usage, and general science. The work could be taxing and frustrating. But Burrell was proud of the w88 sports betting app standard he maintained. He tested frequently. He asked a lot of his students. He wanted them all to succeed. It was, he said, an example of a larger lesson all could benefit from.
&w88 sports betting app;They learned the value of school,” he said. (13)
Education and the advancement of human rights had always been important to w88 sports betting app. He had been a chairman for the University’s Black Student Organization, and in 1967 had made his support known as a young Black college professor at San Jose State University, Harry Edwards, began to organize workshops for Black athletes to consider the possibility of boycotting the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City.
The possible protest was based on America’s long history of segregation and discrimination. In fact, at one of the first such workshops held in the country over 1967’s Thanksgiving weekend at the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles, w88 sports betting app, Lee Evans, Tommie Smith, and UCLA basketball star Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), among others, were in attendance to hear Edwards’ thoughts.
Edwards told Sports Illustrated magazine that the workshops and the possible boycott of Black athletes were a reaction to the fact that “race relations are worse now than ever. … We&w88 sports betting app;re not trying to lose the Olympics for the Americans. …. But it&w88 sports betting app;s time for the Black people to stand up as men and women … You see, this may be our last opportunity to settle this mess of violence.” (14)
Black athletes such as Evans and Smith went ahead and competed in the 1968 Olympics, but made their feelings well known. Smith and Carlos, after finishing first and third in the men&w88 sports betting app;s 200-meter Olympic final, made history during the medals ceremony by lowering their heads and raising their hands in defiance as the “Star-Spangled Banner” played. Today their historic moment is memorialized by a statue on the San Jose State campus, where both were student-athletes.
On April 8, 1970, Black students on the University campus held a three-hour long meeting asking for social, academic and financial change. Rumors were running rampant as well that the University&w88 sports betting app;s first Black professor, Art Professor Ben Hazard, who had joined the faculty only a year before, was not going to be reappointed. The concerns of the Black students were valid. There were only 72 Black students on campus in 1970.
During the meeting, w88 sports betting app shared his own experience. He had wanted to pursue a graduate degree following graduation. But w88 sports betting app was “met with barriers” as he tried to gain acceptance into the graduate program. Additionally, w88 sports betting app noted, it was hard “in getting a job” at the University. (15)
There was a lot at play that day during the meeting. University President N. Edd Miller assured the students that Hazard would be reappointed; later that summer, Hazard would leave the University to become curator at the Oakland Museum. Miller&w88 sports betting app;s assurances that the University could do better did lead to some improvements. By November 1971 the University&w88 sports betting app;s campus minority staff had grown to 22 individuals from minority groups holding faculty-level positions. (16).
w88 sports betting app’s participation in the April meeting hadn’t gone unnoted, and his presence and his words had seemed to help. Having one of the world’s most well-known athletes provide their own personal testimony had proven powerful.
w88 sports betting app would serve for a time as the director of the University’s Equal Opportunity Program, though it still remained a challenge for Burell to find the time to train, travel and compete at world-class level.
Then an opportunity arose. It was colorful and captured the attention. It promised money. The International Track Association, which was formed in fall 1972, attempted to bring professional track and field to America. World-class athletes such as Burrell, John Carlos, Lee Evans, world record holding miler Jim Ryun, pole vaulter Bob Seagren and on the women’s side Olympic gold medalist Wyomia Tyus and others gave the fledgling league some legitimacy. Meets were televised and the athletes were paid, which meant that they lost their amateur standing and could not compete in future Olympic Games. The ITA was w88 sports betting app on entertainment value – shot putter Brian Oldfield, for example, often competed in a speedo and would lumber powerfully alongside top sprinters in match races over 40 yards. The association also, thanks to the great talent of athletes, many of whom were members of that incredible Olympic team from ’68, was highly competitive. The ITA’s 51 meets from 1973-76 saw 34 world bests. (17)
For athletes like Otis w88 sports betting app, “professional” status didn’t necessarily translate into huge paydays. w88 sports betting app said in 1974 that in 10 ITA meets he had earned a grand total of ,000, while also having to work two jobs in Los Angeles. John Carlos, still one of the fastest men in the world at age 29, had earned about ,100.
Burrell, who was working with Carlos to form an Inglewood, California-based track club, said at the time that he missed living in Northern Nevada: “I love the area …. But I haven’t been able to make a decent living here … I was teaching at a junior w88 sports betting app school last year and worked as an assistant track coach at Los Angeles Southwestern Junior College. We finished second in the state. I’m more of an administrator than a coach, though.” (18)
‘I tell them to let them know I&w88 sports betting app;ve been around&w88 sports betting app;
In the late 1970s and beyond, several top Black track and field athletes from America were asked to coach and advise athletes from the developing nations of the world. The move helped galvanize the incredible diversity elite track and field sees today. w88 sports betting app spent much of the late 1970s serving as a national coach in Nigeria and would also have stints as a national coach in the ‘90s in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
w88 sports betting app returned to serve as an assistant coach – as well as serve as the recreation director at the Sierra Nevada Job Corps in Stead – at Nevada from 1986-1989 under Coach Jack Cook.
Cook, like Dankworth a Wolf Pack Hall of Fame track and field coach who led the Pack for two decades, realized the treasure trove of knowledge and experience the Wolf Pack had in w88 sports betting app.
“When I recruit a w88 sports betting app jumper, I tell them I have the best jump coach in the nation,” Cook said.
The legendary Reno Gazette-Journal sportswriter Steve Sneddon described Burrell in 1989. At 45, Burrell still very much looked like the 6-foot-2, 170-pound champion he was back in 1966: “Watch Otis Burrell from afar and put the memory in cruise control on a windy afternoon at Mackay Stadium. The year could be 1966. There’s the solitary slender figure standing near the w88 sports betting app jump pit. He’s wearing the blue and silver Nevada Wolf Pack jacket, a dark blue stocking cap and gray muffler to battle the merciless winds coming of Peavine Mountain.”
w88 sports betting app, for his part, said it was still difficult for him to talk about all of his accomplishments. Though w88 sports betting app added that when the moment was right and a story might have application in building an athlete’s confidence or in reassuring them, he might share something from his athletic past.
“I&w88 sports betting app;ve been in Sports Illustrated,” said the athlete who had traveled to more than 50 countries during his career. “I&w88 sports betting app;ve been to Russia. Not too many people here have been in Russia. I&w88 sports betting app;ve been to Burma. Hardly anyone&w88 sports betting app;s been to Burma. I&w88 sports betting app;ve been to Vietnam and I wasn&w88 sports betting app;t even in the army. … I tell them to let them know I&w88 sports betting app;ve been around.” (19)
Cook said his respect for w88 sports betting app was total. Here was an athlete who had done so much, and had also had to face disappointment, the ’68 Olympic Trials chief among them.
Yet here w88 sports betting app was, coaching, listening, observing, sharing the occasional story with just the right meaning at just the right time.
“He&w88 sports betting app;s a competitor,” Cook said. “He&w88 sports betting app;s been able to fight through adversities all his life.” (20)
Over the past several years, Burrell has continued to teach and coach. After his stints in the 1990s coaching overseas, Burrell was an assistant cross country/track and field coach at Washington Preparatory School in Los Angeles, a program with no all-weather track, which required the former No. 1-ranked U.S. w88 sports betting app jumper to drag and mark the lanes of the track before every meet. Burrell was an adjunct professor at Santa Monica College from 2008-2012, coaching jumps, hurdles and sprints, as well as teaching kinesiology and physical education. (21)
Since 2011, Burrell has coached hurdles and the w88 sports betting app jump at Palos Verdes Peninsula w88 sports betting app School. The focus remains the same. His ability to impact others remains his greatest gift. The 30 to 35 boys and girls Burrell coaches have a saying about his coaching: “Hurdles4lyfe.”
Otis w88 sports betting app will turn 80 years old on May 9. It doesn’t sound like he is slowing down anytime soon. His role, he has written, continues to be to help his young athletes “come to the realization that they can identify and apply their natural talents.” (22)
As far as talents go, there are few like Otis w88 sports betting app in the University’s history.
It all started with a random phone call to the Wolf Pack track office nearly 60 years ago.
And what a journey it has been.
NOTES
- “It’s … how soon can you get here?” Dankworth, excited and a bit incredulous about his luck, replied: “w88 sports betting app jumper fell into UNR’s lap,” Reno Gazette-Journal, June 22, 1988.
- He called Grambling first but the head track and field coach wasn’t available: “w88 sports betting app: UNR’s globe-jumping Hall of Famer,” Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 19, 1979.
- &w88 sports betting app;You know, he called me and I happened to be in my office,” Dankworth said: &w88 sports betting app;Wolf Pack Trackmen Gain National Stature,” Nevada State Journal, Oct. 12, 1974.
- “w88 sports betting app was a phenomenon then,” Freeman recalled nearly 30 years later. “But he took the time and effort to teach me to jump”: “Athletes, coaches criticize decision,’ Reno Gazette-Journal, May 4, 1994.
- “(w88 sports betting app) could possibly be the greatest athlete Nevada ever had, performance-wise”: “Jumping Becomes Hobby With Ex-Pack Star,” Nevada State Journal, Feb. 22, 1970.
- He came agonizingly close to clearing it. On his third attempt, his trail leg nudged the bar off: “Wolf Pack’s w88 sports betting app still has goals to leap for,” Reno Gazette-Journal, May 1, 1989.
- “Larry held (the Mackay Stadium record) for about five minutes,” Montgomery said. “He jumped 6-8 but was overshadowed because Otis w88 sports betting app went 7-1 later that day”: “Former Pack basketball great dies at 54,” Reno Gazette-Journal, June 30, 1999.
- “I&w88 sports betting app;d rate myself No. 1 on the basis of what I have done in international competition,” he said in 1970”: “Jumping Becomes Hobby With Ex-Pack Star,” Nevada State Journal, Feb. 22, 1970.
- &w88 sports betting app;He was a great competitor,” Dankworth added. &w88 sports betting app;He was one of the very best. Otis was always tough in national and international competition”: &w88 sports betting app;Wolf Pack Trackmen Gain National Stature,” Nevada State Journal, Oct. 12, 1974.
- “When I first saw Fosbury “in 1967, I was doing 7-2. He was doing 6-7”: “Wolf Pack’s w88 sports betting app still has goals to leap for,” Reno Gazette-Journal, May 1, 1989.
- “Some,” he said, adding in another interview that it just wasn&w88 sports betting app;t his style to either brag or wallow too much based on his athletic achievements: “Jumping Becomes Hobby With Ex-Pack Star,” Nevada State Journal, Feb. 22, 1970.
- “I’ve always been introverted. Maybe they thought I was conceited. I used to be embarrassed to talk. … I was quiet back then. I never bragged on myself”: “Wolf Pack’s w88 sports betting app still has goals to leap for,” Reno Gazette-Journal, May 1, 1989.
- “They learned the value of school”: “Construction jobs program helps Reno&w88 sports betting app;s minorities,” Nevada State Journal, May 16, 1970.
- &w88 sports betting app;You see, this may be our last opportunity to settle this mess of violence”: &w88 sports betting app;A Step to an Olympic Boycott,” Sports Illustrated Magazine, Dec. 4, 1967.
- Additionally, he noted, it was hard &w88 sports betting app;in getting a job” at the University: &w88 sports betting app;Black students list grievances at U. of N.,” Nevada State Journal, April 8, 1970.
- By November 1971 the University&w88 sports betting app;s campus minority staff had grown to 22 individuals from minority groups holding faculty-level positions: “Reno campus minority staff – 22 faculty, 61 others,” Reno Evening Gazette, Nov. 5, 1971.
- Its 51 meets from 1973-76 saw 34 world bests: International Track Association, Wikipedia entry.
- “I&w88 sports betting app;m more of an administrator than a coach, though”: “John Carlos: ‘As bad in Track as Ali in Boxing,” Nevada State Journal, Aug. 2, 1974.
- “I tell them to let them know I’ve been around”: “Wolf Pack’s w88 sports betting app still has goals to leap for,” Reno Gazette-Journal, May 1, 1989.
- “He’s been able to fight through adversities all his life”: “Wolf Pack’s w88 sports betting app still has goals to leap for,” Reno Gazette-Journal, May 1, 1989.
- w88 sports betting app was an adjunct professor at Santa Monica College from 2008-2012, coaching jumps, hurdles and sprints, as well as teaching kinesiology and physical education: Otis w88 sports betting app LinkedIn.
- “ … come to the realization that they can identify and apply their natural talents”: Otis w88 sports betting app LinkedIn.
