The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/535299
152 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY TIM PEELER T here would have been a revolution. And there might not have been a national championship. Thirty years after the fact, that's how NC State head track and field coach Rollie Geiger, his top assistant at the time and the four members of the only Wolfpack relay team in any sport to win an NCAA title re- member their trip to the national champion- ship meet in Austin, Texas, in early June 1985. Geiger, just one year into the position he has now held for 32 years, wasn't sure he should keep senior Alston Glenn on the second leg of the 4x100 relay, along with senior leadoff man Gus Young, freshman third leg Danny Peebles and junior anchor Harvey McSwain. That experienced and talented lineup had equaled the fastest time in the world in the 4x100 in the Atlantic Coast Relays and owned the fastest time in the world in the 4x200. Then Glenn, a veteran from Durham's Northern High School, pulled a hamstring during practice. For the next three weeks, with replacement Jake How- ard, a long jumper by trade, running the third leg and Peebles running the second, the Wolfpack squad was strong, but not world-class fast. The core lineup was amazing. Young, a New York native with Jamaican citizenship, had just come back from the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, where he helped the Caribbean nation win the silver medal in the 4x100 relay. Peebles — fresh out of Raleigh's Broughton High School, where he helped set a national high school record in the 4x100 — had grown up watch- ing the other members of the team running on NC State's Paul Derr Track and was des- tined to become the school's most accom- plished sprinter. And Shelby native McSwain — a Western Carolina football transfer in 1982, who had set the school record in the 100 meters in 1983, then dropped out of school in 1984 — re-enrolled for his junior year and another shot at glory. The sprinters were mentored by assistant coach Curtis Frye, who had come to Raleigh from East Carolina shortly after Geiger, the men's and women's cross country coach, succeeded veteran head coach Tom Jones as the head of the track and field programs when Jones left for Texas-El Paso. "Before Alston got hurt, we were head and shoulders above everybody else in the country," Peebles said. Glenn's injury was troublesome, however, and neither Young nor Peebles was 100 per- cent healthy, even though they managed to edge Virginia for the ACC championship en route to the Wolfpack's second consecutive team title. Still, they had run together only a couple of times that spring after equaling the world's fastest mark, and one of those times was disastrous. Pebbles and McSwain had trouble with the exchange in an important meet in Chapel Hill and dropped the baton. So there was a little bit of doubt going into the championship meet in Texas, with eventual team champion Arkansas, Baylor, Rice and Texas Christian all posing big chal- lenges for the Wolfpack. "Curtis kept telling me, 'Alston is going to be okay; he's going to be okay,'" Geiger recalled. "I wasn't so sure." In fact, Peebles said, Glenn was running at about 75 percent when the team left for the championship, though none of the sprint- ers ever thought the senior leader wouldn't be on the track for the finals. Glenn was in ■ PACK PAST Looking Back At The 1985 4x100 Squad, NC State's Only National Champion Relay Team Clockwise from top left, senior Alston Glenn, freshman Danny Peebles, senior Gus Young and junior Harvey McSwain equaled the fastest 4x100 time in the world before claiming the national title. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS