1968 Track and Cross Country - Cindermen and Harriers

The Class of 1968 Cross Country team was rather remarkable - we did very well / near great without a coach. Bruce Hattemer was the Captain. We worked very hard with incredible self-discipline for 17 year olds to accomplish some real successes. In Cross Country, you score your first 5 finishers. We had four who were always in the top group (Bruce, Farris, Jerry Buttimer, Jim Laski) and then we stood at the finish and "prayed" for Dan McCann to leg it in and give us a chance to win a big time meet against teams that had a coach and other things. We went up to a meet in Milwaukee against "real" competition and had all the coaches of the other teams talking to themselves - "who are those guys!" - Bruce either won or came in 2nd, Jerry ahead of me, I was in 20th, and Jim was not far behind; but where was Dan? If Dan finished better than normal, we could possibly win. Well, Dan meandered to the finish in a respectable place, but not enough to totally upset the elite. However, Dan was truly doing us a favor to be on the team at all; he was really just trying to be in better shape for basketball, his true love and best sport - and justly that basketabll team won the Catholic League Lightweight Championship that Winter because Dan was in better shape !

In the picture above, Dan is missing - he is also missing in our lives, as he passed away far too young in life - this page is for him - he didn't have to do what he did for our team, but he did it for his friends.

A. Buttimer is really Jerry Buttimer - somehow Jerry picked up the monicker "Alphonse."

Well, they found us a track coach and we did pretty good. The Rice Relays was always a challenge and opportunity for us. We really showed them, and even better Mendel went out of their way to inscribe one of the trophies to recognize what we did. When we had the Mendel closing party in 1988, we did the right thing and made sure each of us "won" one of our trophies. That trophy sitting above my desk has meant a great deal to me in the last 20 years. There are too many RIPs listed above - they are gone but far from forgotten, and I see them every time I look at the trophy.