The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/535299
154 ■ THE WOLFPACKER ■ PACK PAST the lineup for the preliminaries, when the Wolfpack posted a time of 39.31 to advance to the finals. "No disrespect to anyone else on the team, but we were not going to run without Alston," Peebles said. "Let me re-phrase that: I was a little skinny freshman who wasn't going to say anything. Harvey and Gus were the veterans on the team, and they weren't going to run without Alston." While the Wolfpack was ranked as the top 4x100 team in the country, Arkansas had topped the Wolfpack's best time with a sub-39-second race in April and was ready to win in a head-to-head matchup. "By then, we were kind of an after- thought," Peebles said. "We would have been competitive enough to make the finals, but I don't know if we would have won." Even as he climbed to the top of the grandstands to watch, Geiger still wasn't convinced that putting Glenn in the lineup was the right thing to do. "I walked up every step mumbling, 'I sure hope Curtis is right,'" Geiger said. "There was really nothing for me to do but sit up there and watch." On the first leg of the seven-team fi- nal, Young lingered a little too long in the blocks. Glenn, just a little gimpy with an Ace bandage wrapped around his upper thigh, held his own, but Peebles needed to make up some ground on what turned out to be a shortened leg. Frye, now the head coach at South Caro- lina, had a few other tricks tucked in his coaching shorts. He whispered in Peebles' ear that Jones, the coach that had recruited the dual-sport star, told him that the fresh- man was by far the weak link on the team and Jones wasn't sure he would have him in the lineup. "He never said anything like that at all," said Frye, chuckling three decades later. "Danny was a young kid, who maybe wasn't as tough as some of the other guys. I needed to give him a little motivation." Frye also had Peebles hand off the baton to McSwain two steps into the exchange zone, far earlier than most teams. That gave McSwain more time to get rolling with his world-class sprinter's speed. "I just thought if we were in striking distance when I got Harvey the baton, we would win," Peebles remembered. "I am pretty sure I have never run a faster leg in a relay in my life." As he handed off the baton, Peebles said what he always told McSwain: "Go to work." There were three runners in front of him. McSwain revved up quickly and passed Baylor's anchor in just a few steps. He breezed past an overmatched Arkansas quarter-miler with 50 meters to go. He then chased down Courtney Brown of Rice, the lone runner ahead of him, with just three meters to spare, finishing the race in 39.13 seconds to give the Wolfpack its first men's track national title. Rice finished second at 39.15 seconds, while favored Arkansas finished a distant sixth. "To this day, that is still the greatest an- chor leg I have ever seen in the 4x100 relay," Geiger noted. Frye, who coached two other men's 4x100 relay champions at North Carolina and South Carolina and two women's 4x100 champs at South Carolina, concurs, still re- membering every step of that first title. Peebles was still decelerating when Mc- Swain passed the final two runners. "From my angle, I couldn't tell what hap- pened," Peebles said. "I could tell by the crowd that something was going on, but it wasn't until I saw Harvey throw his hands up that I knew we had won." Peebles still lives in his hometown and is a volunteer coach with Geiger's team. Mc- Swain is the track coach at Shelby's Crest High School. Young moved around while in the National Guard after he finished with school and lives in Garner. And Glenn lives in Charlotte. "It was a great set of runners and one of the fastest relay teams I've ever coached," proclaimed Geiger. "In the end, they were a great team. I give Danny a lot of credit for that, because of his football background. He brought them all together so that they weren't just four sprinters out there. They were a strong team. "The baton never missed a stride when it was in their hands." And the revolution never happened. ■ Junior Harvey McSwain ran what 32-year Wolfpack head coach Rollie Geiger says is still the greatest anchor leg in the 4x100 relay he has ever seen. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS Tim Peeler, author of the newly released Legends of NC State Basketball, is a regular contributor to The Wolf- packer and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu. Danny Peebles was a freshman on the title- winning relay team, and went on to become the most accomplished sprinter in school history. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS