by Bob Hahn
Carl Sandburg Alum Michael Novak may take home several “awards” at the upcoming Eagle Alumni meet on August 17th. Call it a hunch, but I think he has the trophy for “furthest traveled” to Saturday’s event all but wrapped up. The Orland Park native has been living in Australia since the 1970’s and currently resides in Beechworth, a town located between Sydney and Melbourne. He may also take the trophy for the “most senior” Alumni, as he is proudly a member of the graduating class of 1969. We will welcome Mike back to Illinois as he is kicking off his 2 month stay by generously accepting our invitation to be this year’s keynote speaker for the post Alumni race festivities. He will finish his visit in October as Mike and his daughter Anna compete in the Chicago Marathon. This trip, as has been his whole life, is centered around running and family. He ran sophomore thru senior year at Sandburg and was co-captain of the ’69 team along with fellow senior Ryan Armbruster. Mike was one of those late bloomers whose career in collegiate running ultimately overshadowed his prep career. Mike was an accomplished collegiate athlete at Western Illinois University in cross country and track and has continued on his journey running steeple chases and marathons since.
I recently was able to connect with Mike via the internet for an interview about his life and times at Sandburg and beyond. The internet was key, as the Land of Oz (short for “Auss”, or Australia) is on the opposite schedule as us, so phone conversation was going to be difficult. So without further ado, here is what Mike had to say:
(B.H. ’81) It seemed to us high school kids like a long trip to PEORIA! But you are coming half way around the world for this meet!! How did you end up in the "Land down under"?
(M.N. ’69) My wife and friends would say it was to meet them as they were all waiting for me down here. The truth is that I had just finished at WIU and teaching jobs were scarce. After a year and a bit of doing substitute teaching I was ready to move on. I applied for the Peace Corps and thought about going back to college when I heard Australia was recruiting American teachers. I chased it up, applied, interviewed and was accepted. When I got here I seemed to fit right in and the rest is history, it's a wonderful country with great people. One of the best things I have ever done.
You were one if the "pioneers" of Sandburg cross country. Tell us about the time period you ran at Sandburg.
John Wilson was the head coach and I guess it's fair to say the program was in its infancy. There was not much tradition but there was a tremendous amount of talent just waiting to be tapped. We knew nothing and were feeling our way and we knew there were outstanding runners around. In fact one member of the team actually had a brother that ran at NIU, a Sandburg grad Jim Reeves. We spoke of him in hushed tones. Numbers wise it seemed we always had plenty of runners for the two divisions, the photo I've attached shows a team of about 30 my senior year.
I have a pretty good memory, my wife says, "like an elephant", so I remember almost everyone. I ran for three years and the first year is a bit fuzzy but if I saw some yearbook photos I am sure I would remember most of the guys. The photos give a pretty good idea what the singlets looked like, nothing very flashy and we all had the old cotton sweats, very functional but not pretty.
Tell us about your impact on the team.
Not sure if I had much impact, I was the co-captain with Ryan Armbruster who is now a lawyer in Boise, Idaho. I was generally first man and had a very good conference race, finished 6th. The top five all went to state and I think finished in the top fifty. Our varsity was quite ordinary, 4th or 5th in conference, but we had a great Frosh/Soph team that I don't think lost a meet. I never thought much about leadership but looking back I was as supportive as possible to teammates and the younger guys. I used to get a bit of a thrill watching the young guys compete and certainly encouraged them as much as possible and we all enjoyed their success. There was generally a pretty positive feel about being on the team and we had some fun. Looking back though, I think I had more impact after I went to Western and came back to run occasionally with some of the runners or the team as a whole.
Tell us about the conference back then. We were the SICA West in my time. I remember Sandburg, Stagg, Argo, Shepard, Lincoln-way, Oak Lawn, maybe a few others. Did that reach back to the early 70's?
We were in the old Southwest Suburban Conference. Besides Sandburg there was Lincoln-way, Rich East, Homewood-Flossmoor, Reavis, Oak Lawn, Bremen and Evergreen Park. It was a good conference in a range of sports. Rich East had a guy finish third in the state my freshman year and my senior year Lincoln-way was third as a team. But it was kind of hit and miss. After I left things moved forward pretty quickly.
Where did Eagle cross country stack up in state at that time?
We had some pretty good runners but the attitude was all about conference and maybe district, no talk of state. If we sent someone down it was kind of an accident. The whole area was much the same, small thinking. Our times were poor by today’s standards. When I left the distance records were 2:03, 4:37 and 10:14. We had a 440 guy, George Tatoole who ran 0:51 and change but I am not sure if George got to Champaign. We had a discus guy make it my sophomore or junior year but I'm not sure. Oak Lawn was the powerhouse in track but H/F and Lincoln-Way were on the way up. In cross country we always held our own locally, the talent was there and we generally had at least one or two guys who could hold their own with anyone in the conference. State was kind of a dream, it was one of my goals but the program and information was not there.
Who were the studs in the State series back then? Ken Popejoy from Glenbard West won in ’68 and David Merrick from Lincoln-Way won in ’69. Do you remember those guys? Who else can you tell us about?
We ran against Merrick when he was a sophomore and he kicked all our butts. He was something. A great talent, and they had a new coach who really turned things around, as I said they were third in the state that year. He had a couple of good teammates who were well up in the state meet and HF's top 2 guys ran well at state that year too. Dave Kamerer of Thornridge was second in the state in the 880 my junior year but we did not see too much of him, ran 1:51 and later 1:48 at University of Illinois. Duane Smith from Moline was 2nd in XC and the two mile my senior year and he ran for about 18 months at Western so I got to know him pretty well. Nice guy, great talent but did not like school much and may have had enough of running after high school. Funny….. of all the top guys from Illinois that year, Tom Swan from Princeton, Peter Reiff from York, Andy Rupert from Proviso West, Gerry Couch from Ottawa, Mark Visk from Palatine, only Popejoy had much of a collegiate career. Willie Thomas from Englewood in Chicago (5th XC & two state 880 titles, 2nd as a sophomore) ran at Tennessee and won the NCAA 800 one year but was never consistent. Oh…… Lee Labadie from Maine West ran at Illinois and had a good career as did Mike Durkin from Holy Cross. These guys had a lot of state titles or high places between them and I guess sometimes things just don't work out.
I noticed the time for Merrick was even faster than Craig Virgin’s time the next year. They must have run a shorter distance before Virgin’s year. Was that race at Detweiller park?
Up until my senior year the state meet was held in Champaign. Not sure exactly when it went to Detweiller, but it was certainly after I graduated. Up until my junior year the official distance was 1.9 miles or about 3k. My senior year they moved that up to 2.3 miles. These were just estimates and courses distances were all over the place, times didn't mean much. Most meets we did not even get splits for the mile. I can remember Coach Wilson giving us miles splits one meet and Bill Reeves going through under 5:00, it blew everyone’s mind, even Bill who was on his way to being Conference Champ and placing 70 something in state.
What was training like back then? We had "standard loop" and a bunch of other names for runs through Palos woods in the 80's. How about you guys?
Training, what was that? Seriously we did very little, Coach Wilson had us do over distance work (2-3 miles), and a couple of times a week we did some up tempo speed work. This was usually laps around the baseball fields. All the running was done around the school and once in a blue moon we would get over to the golf course across the street. I think we got in trouble a few times for going over there as the legal issues were a concern. Mind you, Sandburg was much smaller and we had more playing fields and more grass around the place in those days. Not a hill to be seen and most of the schools we ran at had the same situation. Prior to my senior year I decided to put in a big summer, I ran every day, twice a day most of the time and did it all at school or the golf course. Six miles in the AM and six miles in the PM. I think I put in about 800 miles but it was completely unstructured and once the season started I went backward. Still had a reasonable senior year but in hindsight could have been a lot better. I started on the trails and roads after I left Sandburg and then started to drag a few of the younger runners out to the trails with me. I think Coach Wilson caught on pretty quick and started getting the kids out there after I left for Australia.
Were the home meets at Turtle Head Lake yet?
This is another area that changed after I left. All our home meets were at Sandburg, multiple laps around the school grounds. I ran the alumni meet a couple of times at Turtle Head and the move has to be credited to Coach Wilson.
Give us a great training story.
Not much to add here as we did not do much. The cool thing to do was to pretend you were lazy and couldn't be bothered. I remember once suggesting coach should get us training in the summer and was told to be quiet, he might hear you and think it’s a good idea. I can't recall any training sessions really and we competed every Tuesday and Thursday and sometimes on Saturday. So there was not a lot of time left over to put in a much of work. I will however talk about perhaps something that occurred my freshman year at WIU. We had two new coaches at Western, both well-credentialed. The distance coach had been the “Joe Newton” of Missouri and was a great motivator. I had a reasonable freshman year and all my times came down considerably but my outdoor season was woeful and I was very inconsistent. At the time Arthur Lydiard, the great New Zealand coach, was touring and lecturing throughout the U.S. He came and spent two days in Macomb with us and we got to run with him both days and of course listen to his lecture one evening. He was truly inspiring, as he was in his mid- 50's at the time & still capable of running 10 miles a day without batting an eyelid. His principles set me on the path to a pretty successful college career, PB's after college, the chance to meet, compete and train with some pretty amazing athletes and people and lastly have kept me pretty healthy, touch wood.
The three great stories for me are all about team. My sophomore year at Sandburg we won the old SWC title easily and we came back to win the varsity title my junior year. That year, 1967, we lost only one meet and finished tied for third at the District meet, we just missed qualifying for state, something no Sandburg team had done. Nothing beats those team successes, we had a range of guys who could run and it did not matter who was first man, second man and so on, we just kept rolling. I thought this stuff went on forever but it doesn't! It was not until my senior year at Western that I got to experience this again when we finished fifth in the NCAA College Division Championships. I've had some individual success and done some things I never thought I could do but those three experiences were the top ones for me. After writing this I do have a relevant story about a race or races. After I graduated from WIU and prior to Oz, I went back to work with the Sandburg team. I basically ran with the kids. I enjoyed this, it was a lot of fun and the kids could run. One kid, a freshman, had been away and I was told he was pretty good. Not sure of all the facts, but when I saw him run my eyes nearly popped out of my head. My initial reaction to the people around me was something along the lines of that kid could be as good as anyone in the state. People looked at me like I was from Mars or something. Next spring he ran 4:15 and finished sixth in the state meet, two years later he was state champ. I was very lucky to get to work with Bob Hicks even if it was only for a short time and of course Tom Graves showed up the next year and we all know how that turned out.
Lately, you have been running the marathon! You told me you ran Sydney with your daughter. Tell us about that experience and your accomplishments in marathon running.
I did not start running marathons ‘till later in my career and I regret not getting into them earlier. The first one (St. Louis 1979) when I was in my late twenties was just done for the experience. The second one back in Oz (1980) I went for a time and blew up. In my late thirties some of my friends were doing marathons and I decided do another to show my children what you can achieve if you work hard at something. I guess I also wanted them to have some idea of what their old man used to do when he was a pup. I ran four of them in about three years and was twice the third place finisher in the over 40 age group of the Melbourne Marathon. After that I gave them away and just ran a few times a week for fitness. Fast forward to early this century and my daughter Anna invited me to join her on some road races. It started with 15k, than a couple of half marathons and finally last year circumstances allowed me to run with Anna in her first attempt at the full distance. We ran together most of the way but my prep was a bit short and I hit the wall at about 23 miles. I convinced her to go ahead and she finished strongly. First time in fifty years anybody in the family has beaten me. Now this year at the prompting of Megan Gavin, the daughter of former Sandburg and WIU runner Dave Gavin, Anna put us in the lottery for spots at Chicago. We were both successful and if my body holds up we will toe the line on Oct. 13th. I'm looking for revenge. (just kidding) The goal is to finish together. Funny, but at this stage of my life each time I line up I say to myself, enjoy this, you might not be here again.
Might stop now and give this one a think. I've done more than I intended to do tonight and I can get a bit verbose when talking about running or runners. See what you think about this and feel free to do what you wish with it. This includes trashing the lot. By the way, I liked your adoring fans comment, but I can assure you that the only times I was adored was when I was about sixth months old, once I got mobile there was trouble and the adoration was over. My wife assures me this is not the case. I'll handle this last question later. Regards, Mike.
Thanks for your time Michael!!
What a great interview and look into the past!! We will ask you that last question when we see you in a few weeks! So now we know who to credit for getting all the generations of Sandburg runners out to the trails! Our legs and our psyches can thank Mike Novak! We will see “The mighty gold and the blue” soon for a little “walk about” at Turtle Head Lake! “Stand up for Sandburg!...........”