TERRE HAUTE —
Sports fans will be able to jump into the running legend that is Indiana’s track and field legacy with the opening of a new museum in Terre Haute.
“We’re going to do a great job here. The coaches here wouldn’t let us do any less,” Dave Patterson said Saturday morning inside the Terre Haute Convention and Visitors Bureau on East Margaret Avenue.
The bureau’s facility will play host to a new Indiana Association of Track and Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame which will celebrate the accomplishments of athletes of all levels from around the state.
Work on the new facility begins this month and will include memorabilia, as well as a multimedia exhibit where visitors can search film by event, year or name of athlete.
Patterson, director of the bureau, celebrated the announcement inside a room packed with athletes, coaches and fans.
Many of those in attendance will bring the laurels of their Olympic experiences home to Terre Haute.
De Dee Nathan, a two-time U.S. Champion and 2000 Summer Olympian in the heptathalon, credited that shared legacy toward her own success.
“A lot of people in this room contributed to my success,” the current dean of students at Indianapolis’ North Central High School said. “I wouldn’t be who I am without them.”
Nathan won the gold in Cuba, competing for America in the 1991 Pan American Games. She would miss the Olympic team twice before making it at the age of 32 to compete in Australia. She spent 24 years “suffering,” she said, to earn the discipline need to become an Olympian. Training each day for a quarter-century, she said she still looks back at those tapes in wonder at what she did.
“Our sport is great. We are the base of every sport,” the Indiana University alumna said of the runs, jumps and throws associated with track and field. Other athletes have titles such as “ex-football player, ex-basketball player, ex-baseball player, but I’ll be an Olympian forever,” she said.
And among those who came before her was Marshall Goss, a 43-year member of the Indiana University athletic department who, in addition to serving as head track and field coach there and earlier at Bloomington High School South, also served as the head track and field official at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He was also a coach with the U.S. team at the first World Junior Championships in Greece in 1986.
“For 35 years, we’ve been trying to find a way to make this happen,” he told the audience. “Thirty-five years.”
Bill Welch, described by several as a “legendary coach,” said the new Hall of Fame will help educate the public about the sport and inspire tomorrow’s athletes.
Welch, a member of the Indiana High School Track and Field Hall of Fame, as well as that of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s athletic department and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, coached 33 NCAA Division III All-Americans and five national champions while coaching at Rose-Hulman. But prior to that he took the Terre Haute North Patriots’ cross-country team to the 1972 state championship, the first state title for any sport in Terre Haute.
“What is an excellent jump? What is an excellent run? What is an excellent sprint?” he posed, explaining that the hall of fame and its exhibits will serve as a reference point for future athletes now in training. “We’ll see what it can do down the road.”
Terry Brahm, America’s 5,000-meter runner in the 1988 Summer Olympics, was also on hand as Patterson noted that the discipline required to be a great track athlete transfers well into adult life.
“It’s really amazing at how successful they are in all aspects of their life,” he said.
Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.
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