The Milton boys are running in the third heat of the event at the 13A state track meet in St. Paul this weekend

_{(This story is an excerpt from the book “Ski Race Canceled On Account of Snow”)}

The weather on the final day of the Minnesota state track meet last weekend reminded Herb Olsen of his last high school race. As the bleachers cleared Saturday in St. Paul, the skies did the opposite.

Just like on June 10, 1965.

“It was one hell of a storm,” Olsen recalled from his perch along the Hamline University backstretch. The 69-year-old was the oldest of roughly 75 other Milton residents who remained stubbornly fastened to their cold, metal benches as thunder threatened, hail pelted and tornado sirens sounded. After a 25-minute weather delay, the faithful assembly of blue and white finally watched their 17th-ranked boys 4×400-meter relay team run.

“We wouldn’t miss this for the world,” said Stacy Abrams-Williams, who organized the state meet caravan. “It’s a big deal to make it to state and these kids worked really hard for it.” 

“It’s great to have this kind of support,” added head coach Bernie Kasper. “I don’t think we’ve had this many fans drive down for a state meet since I started coaching.” 

He might be right. Milton qualified 20 kids to the 2017 Minnesota class 13A state meet.

“It’s not quite like it used to be,” Olsen said while observing a crew of bedazzled Eden Prairie runners jogging by in matching Adidas warm-ups and carbon-plated spikes. 

“We ran on a cinder track, you know.” 

That’s not the only difference. 

The Molars competed in 10A until last year, when the Minnesota State High School League approved an expansion to 13 classes at its annual congress. The decision was made “in order to enrich the student-athlete experience by providing increased opportunity for a higher proportion of member schools.”

“It’s hard when, every year, Ransack Junction wins all the events,” said Kasper, a member of the MSHSL coaches’ association, in reference to the Molars former Section 27AAAAAAAAAA rivals. The Oilers have won 10 of the last 12 section team titles in boys track and field. 

“The committee members I spoke with all agreed student-athlete motivation and retention would increase if state felt a little more within reach,” Kasper said.

Things were different when Olsen lined up with Johnny Stalk, Millard McGee and anchor Magnus Ostersund for the mile relay at the Region 5 championships in Duluth on Memorial Day weekend 52 years ago. The “Four Horses” — a monicker bestowed upon the polite farm boys by a Rochester columnist — were racing for a chance to compete at a one-class state meet. 

The blonde-haired quartet steamed past teams from Duluth, Grand Rapids, Brainerd and St. Cloud in a still-standing school-record time of 3:16.8 (which converts to a 3:14.9 4×400-meter time, in case you’re wondering). Ostersund — who narrowly missed qualifying in the open 440-yard dash after he rolled his ankle on an errant shot put with 50-yards left — rocketed from the fourth position to the lead in the relay, holding on for the win with an astonishing 47.2 split.

“He was something else,” Olsen said of his teammate, who passed away 11 years ago in a boating accident off the coast of his native Oslo. 

“It was a shame what happened to him at states.”

Six section champions set their blocks on the University of Minnesota track for that historic 1965 final: Edina, Rochester, Minneapolis North, Mankato West, Winona and….. Milton. Milton’s entire population was 1/8 of the size of Terrance Brown’s graduating class at North. Brown and his teammate, Greg Fulford, would later run at Syracuse University, with Brown qualifying for the 1968 Olympic Trials. Racing in such a stacked field, Milton coach Rod Flehm told his athletes it was paramount for each to run their absolute best, Olsen recalled. 

“And then hope for a miracle,” he added with a hoarse chuckle. 

Instead of receiving manna from heaven, the Molars woke up to an untimely tragedy. Officials phoned Flehm and said Ostersund was ineligible to race because he was a J-1 Exchange Visitor who was in Minnesota only because of the 1961 Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act. 

“That was so new, we didn’t even know any such rule existed,” Olsen said. “And maybe it didn’t…which was why Flehm was steaming mad, as you can imagine. Luckily, we had Sven to fill in.” 

Sven Svenson — though he was practically as full-blooded of a Swede as you could get — was a lifelong Molar resident. He wasn’t exactly a star runner though. Or at least he hadn’t been all year. In fact, he’d spent most of his time long-jumping and flirting with girls, Olsen recalled. He ran one mile relay, splitting somewhere in the 55-second vicinity.

As Olsen looked back on his state experience, his grand nephew began his own.

Trevor Olsen ripped around the nine-lane track to kick off the third of six heats. As he scooted past a sign taped to the balcony which read, “Mighty Menacing Molars!” and another — “Mash the competition Michael!” — a lightning bolt rippled across the sky. The sophomore took maybe three more strides before an official draped in a bright neon raincoat dashed out to the backstretch. 

An athlete from Mason Bridge halted immediately, as did Olsen. A black Dilworth jersey flashed past and another runner from Park Christian High School dodged the referee and went on his way. Stray jeers hurled down from the bleachers, mixing with confused cheers and one or two parental boos. 

The elder Olsen, taken aback and too hard of hearing to record the thunder clap which resonated off the horizon a few seconds later, stared into the infield with a confused countenance. Another lightning bolt flashed and soon, every athlete was being corralled, even the DGF Rebel.

These days, Olsen’s menacing calf-muscles are hidden by plain white Dockers. Even though his aging eyes and wrinkled skin droop, the former champion and dairy farmer still has an aesthetically arresting pose. Svenson felt it the moment he found out he’d be running for the team, at a hastily-arranged captain’s meeting.

“My first thought?” he rhetorically asked when the topic came up during a phone call he took from his Brandon, Florida home last week.

“Geez. I thought, if I ruin this, our whole family is going to get run out of town.” 

Maybe the county, too. Afterall, everyone in Aitkin County was at the track if it came down to a vote. Shovel Lake resident Shirley McFadden, 65, remembers going to the train station with her mom that week. 

“We had nothin to do with track,” she said. “No brothers, no sisters. Nothin. I didn’t even know why we were going to the train station, but then, when I got there and all my friends were there, too, I thought, ‘gee this is swell.’” 

McFadden, who lives by the now abandoned Soo Line platform in Swatara, joined a stampede of over 1,400 eager bandwagoners who filled the upper deck of the University of Minnesota stadium for both days of the meet, even though their team only competed in the final event. 

“Some people — we didn’t even know that. And I think a lot of other people didn’t either. But we just kind of waited it out like a bunch of patient midwesterners,” McFadden said. “I think waiting around for two whole days made it that much more special.”

McFadden’s husband, Rodney — both of whom were present at the 2017 state meet watching their daughter, Riley, try to break her own school record in the pole vault (6 feet-6 inches) — said he remembers it vividly.

“It was a top-5 moment in my childhood,” he said. “Not so much because of the significance of the win, but because of how it happened.”

To mitigate Svenson’s impact on the race, Flehm opted to place the new guy in the leadoff role. Svenson recalled crouching down, checking his cleats against the blocks and seeing the steely eyes of Fulford — one lane to his inside — through the gap between his thighs.

“Then I noticed my jersey wasn’t tucked in,” he added. “I quickly put my hand up to tell the referee and he was gracious and let me stand up and then you know, tuck it back in.”

After the pause for Svenson’s wardrobe malfunction. Athletes were called to marks a second time. After another momentary pause, the starter’s gun sent the teams out of the gates. A moment later, a second boom echoed off the stadium’s brick walls. Assuming a side judge had issued a false start, everyone pulled up — except Svenson. 

“Coach used to say I was like a drugged up donkey shot in the butt on May Day,” he said. “Ain’t nothin was going to stop me.” 

The second sound was thunder. 

Fulford twitched his neck towards the starter, who could only shrug his shoulders. Edina’s lead-off runner frowned and then took off. Fulford followed.

“I guess they decided they couldn’t cancel it once it started,” Olsen said.

Fulford bent his eyes downward and began to mow down the field. Even though he was spotted a roughly four-second disadvantage, Fulford caught Svenson in the final home straight. The underdogs — or ‘Thunderdogs,’ as the same Rochester columnist would rechristen them that evening — knew at that point, there was a chance. 

“We had our best guys coming and North only had one more ringer,” Olsen said. “And their second and third guys were just, well, ok.” 

Edina, led by future Gopher and Big Ten champion Will Thetford, controlled the second leg. Stalk managed a 50-low split to keep the Molars in the third position. Rochester made its main bid for glory, moving up from fifth to second behind a heroic effort from Ronny Clouds. McGee, the Molars’ running back in the fall, “always ran a good curve,” Olsen said. The stocky junior went around Rochester’s third guy and pulled even with Guy Trapp, the Hornets penultimate leg. 

“Mil really won it for us,” Olsen humbly stated. “He pulled out his best race of the year.”

McGee rocketed into the lead with a 49-high leg. Trapp tightened up over the final 150-yards, ceding the silver slot to North, which closed with Brown.

“I still remember the clerk putting me into the first lane in the exchange zone and then, waiting there,” Olsen said. “I looked down at Mil coming and then I looked back at the guys I was about to go against. …And I see the official keeps shuffling Terrance up closer to me. I thought — oh boy, here we go. This is about to get interesting.” 

McGee’s wide quads hammered his black, logo-less shoes into the dirt, pounding his final steps home in order to give Olsen as much leeway as possible. Milton’s exchange, however, was average. A second later, Brown glided effortlessly into his hand-off zone, silently striding out two big steps before jolting his arm back and swiping the baton from his dying comrade. Olsen’s 15-yard lead at the bell was erased by the end of the first turn. 

Brown took the lead along the backstretch, buoyed by the partisan audience who’d witnessed his state title in the open 440-yard dash three hours prior. Olsen recalled feeling overwhelming doubt when he was passed, but only briefly. 

“It would sound better to tell you a lie,” he said when asked what went through his mind. Instead of the accurate, but relatively surface-level recollections he’d given well being interrogated by this reporter all afternoon, the Molar alumnus suddenly became emotional while sitting in the stands. 

“I wish I could tell you I realized how important this moment might be for our town and that I was carried by all of the neighbors and family and friends and fans I knew who’d come down — who’d stopped milking cows and closed up general stores and just left important work — all to watch us,” he continued. 

“But really, I only realized any of that much later. In that moment, my drive came from my friends. I wanted to win for them.” 

Olsen clamped his jaw and mustered every available muscle in his spindly 6-foot-2-inch, 149-pound frame.

But the gap increased.

Brown was a true talent, a thoroughbred bound for future athletic greatness. On the contrary, this was — literally and figuratively — the end of the road for the small-town kid (who eschewed a college education to take over the family farm). Looking back, it signaled the end the small-town dream, disfigured and devalued by an expanding participation trophy culture. 

By the time Brown entered the homestretch, the lead had swelled to 20 yards. Then, out of the corner of his sweat-stung, salt-crusted eyelids, Olsen caught a glance of Ostersund. The barred Norwegian had somehow found a way down to the fence and was screaming at his teammate. 

“All I could hear was his Heia! Heia!” Olsen said. “And I opened up.” 

Olsen relaxed his gait. Instead of bearing down every step, he floated. 

“It was like, for 10 seconds, I was in a different, almost weightless state,” he said. “The only thing I could hear, and the only thing I thought of was the quick ‘tap, tap, tap,’ of my shoes glancing off the track.” 

Ground-time was minimal. Knee lift maximal. The speed was shocking. Flehm later told Olsen his first three-fourths of the race took about 38 seconds — nothing too special (in fact, perhaps even slow) for the team captain. 

The final 110 yards: a blistering 10.9 seconds. 

That — plus Brown’s unknowingly premature celebration — allowed Olsen to slingshot by and steal the gold in a final stride and dive across the line. 

The prevailing bystander reaction was stunned silence. Of course, the top right corner of the stadium flew into a boisterous riot, but the country folk’s pandemonium seemed so far away, it had little bearing on the finish line atmosphere. 

“I remember a big photographer’s bulb getting stuck right in my face as I peeled my body off the track,” Olsen said. “And the boys came around me and of course, Magnus came and found us, somehow. And a man in a black suit — a reporter I suppose — asked me a question. I don’t remember the question,” Olsen continued, peering out at the chaos of heat 3 of the 13A 2017 state track and field meet. 

Officials and coaches presently were convened in the middle of the track near the 300-meter hurdles start. After three or four minutes, three coaches left, one throwing his hands up in frustration, as more officials gathered, hoping to have their moment in the sun.

Except there was no sun. Only storms and showers. 

Ultimately, the race was postponed. That means teams will have to return tomorrow to complete the heats. A MSHSL spokesperson confirmed with the Milton Chronicle that the final will be pushed to Sunday.

More hotel rooms, more meals, more tickets, more races. More state meet opportunities. 

“What was it you said,” your humble correspondent prodded as Olsen tried to jump from the present to a half-century-old memory. Finally he spoke. 

“I looked at the man with his notebook and said, ‘sir, we’re from Milton. This is probably never going to happen again,’” Olsen stated. After a pause, he looked down at a frivolous debate between a Dilworth fan and the lane judge. Seeing that the spectacle was going to carry on no matter what, for a long while, Olsen sighed and turned back. 

“And you know,” he continued. “I was absolutely right.”