Division I regional track finals
Fenwick graduation 2012
Ponitz graduation 2012
Home > Blogs > High School Huddle > Archives > 2010 > June > 07 > Entry
Kathy Mobley fulfilled her dream by winning Miami Valley’s first state title
The Miami Valley School’s 400-meter relay victory in the Division III state track and field meet at Columbus last Saturday, June 5 was NOT the first state T&F title won by the Rams in program history, as previously reported in HS Huddle and the DDN.
Longtime DDN writer Dave Long and former University of Dayton women’s coach Lefty Martin both confirmed that the honor goes to sprinter Kathy Mobley, who won the Class A 100 state title in 1980. Her clocking of 12.20 was a small-school record for many years.
But that isn’t the best part of Mobley’s story.
The DDN preps beat writer back then, Long found his clips that detailed how Mobley first ran track as a junior and won district and regional titles wearing her coach’s old soccer shoes. Spikes finally on her feet, she won the state 100 that spring.
The next year her blocks slipped at the start of the district 100 and longtime official Jim Ehler DQ’ed her. Ehler just this past winter retired from coaching basketball at Northmont and worked the regional T&F meet at Welcome Stadium just two weeks ago.
Long reports that during an interview after the DQ, “she said she was having trouble concentrating on track because she needed a subject for the state speech contest. Being black, I asked her if she had ever heard Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. She hadn’t, heard the tape, did her own version of the speech and won the state speech contest the day after she won the state 200 meters.”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: State track & field
Comments
By laughingloudly@ll.com
June 8, 2010 6:50 PM | Link to this
Dave wrote once of how cool it was to cover the Indy 5000, and while i doubt it was that cool it was probably 10 times cooler than covering the Indy 500. DON’T LET LONG HOLD YOU TO RULES THAT HE COULDN’T ADHERE TO HIMSELF.