Hills Day workout a couple days ago in Alexandria, Virginia.
4 x 400m on the King street hill next to the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, in Alexandria, Virginia.
King street continues a ways up to what used to be called, back in the day, T.C. Williams high school [now Alexandria high school]…..one of Fort Hunt’s arch rivals in track and football.
The T.C. Titans, their 1971 football team was the subject of the Denzel Washington movie called, “Remember The Titans” [released in September, 2000].
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Pretty sure Fort Hunt high school beat them……but whatever.
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As track fans are aware, while attending T.C. Williams high school, Noah Lyles broke the National High School Record at 200 meters.
Over the years he has gone on to an outstanding career as a pro.
World Champion at 100m.
Multi-time World Champion at 200m.
The current American Record Holder at 200m.
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Last Sunday at the annual Fort Hunt high school mega-meetup [see the “remembering Fort Hunt” page on TheETG website], I was yapping with some fellow Fort Hunt’ers and up walks T.C Williams track legend Ricky Garcia, who proceeded to introduce himself.
Apparently he came with one of our school’s track mega-studs back in the day, sprint hurdler, Debbie Bragg LaPrevotte.
Aside from being a high school runner, I was a hardcore track fan since age 13, even of high school track, so to me, even 40 – 45 years later, Ricky Garcia needed no introduction.
During our conversation I proudly reeled off the personal bests of he and some of his distance runner teammates, Mike Mansey and Dwight Stephens who collectively teamed-up with one of their nationally ranked 400m sprinters to run a Distance Medley Relay that broke the National High School Record.
One of several dozen performances by them and other Virginia high school track/cross-country athletes that have contributed to the situation across the last half-century where the state of Virginia, the northern part of Virginia in particular, a relatively small area of the United States has been —way— overly represented in producing the nation’s top high school track athletes and coaches, and in producing folks that go on to become among the country’s/world’s top athletes and coaches.
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