Dick Kochert was born in Lafayette, Indiana, in 1948. He graduated from Wainwright High School and Purdue University. At Wainwright, Dick lettered four years in cross country and track and three years in basketball. His best time in the mile run was 4:28.5 in the 1967 Lafayette Sectional.

In 1970, Dick began his coaching career at East Tipp Junior High, coaching seventh grade football. In 1972, he became an assistant varsity football, basketball and track and field coach at Garrett High School. Dick then accepted a varsity assistant basketball coaching position at Dekalb High School in 1975. After a year at Dekalb, he was named boys’ varsity basketball coach at Tri-County High School. In 1982-1983, Dick began coaching varsity cross country and boys’ track & field programs. He coached 19 seasons of basketball (six as head varsity and one as assistant), six seasons of football, 21 seasons of cross country and 41 seasons of track and field (33 as head and eight as assistant).

Dick has coached boys’ varsity track and field for 33 years at 1A Tri-County High School with an enrollment between 220-240 students. His teams won nine of the 15 sectional championships earned by 1A schools from 2005-2015, with a winning streak of seven consecutive sectional titles and 12 sectional titles overall. His boys won 23 conference championships. The boys finished fifth, seventh and ninth in the Lafayette Regional. Dick also coached the girls’ team for six years, winning two of three sectional titles won by 1A schools from 2006-2015. The girls also won three conference championships. Throughout his tenure, the Cavaliers had 21 state finalists with five all-state athletes.

Dick is a master pole vaulter and co-director, with Greg Pratt, of the Over the Top Tour. The Over the Top Tour features street vault venues at the Max Richey Vault in Kokomo, the Hot Dog Vault in Frankfort, the Mike Hanna Vault at the Indiana Track and Field and Cross Country Hall of Fame Museum in Terre Haute and the Indiana State Fair Vault in Indianapolis.

The one word that best describes Dick’s attitude toward life is “gratitude.” He is extremely grateful for all the people that helped him achieve and succeed in life.

Katie Veith

Homestead

Katie Veith was born to participate in athletics. She was heavily involved in competitive gymnastics until the end of her 8^th grade year, when she decided to devote her time and talents to the sport of track and field and, more specifically, hurdling. The summer of 2003 found her participating in summer track, perfecting her hurdle technique and discovering the sport of pole vaulting. Six weeks after picking up her first pole, she won the 13-14 age group at the National Junior Olympic meet in Miami, Florida. She still holds the record for girls age 15-16 for the Junior Olympics at 13-1.

In 2004 Katie won the outdoor state exhibition event with a vault of 12-6 and participated in the 300-meter hurdles in 47.85. During 2005 she had a setback due to injury, but still placed second at the outdoor state finals with a vault of 12-9. She returned to her winning ways in both 2006 and 2007 with vaults of 13-6 and 12-6, respectively. During her senior season, she decided to return to hurdling and participated at the state finals, taking third place with a personal record of 14.52. She also ran a lifetime best of 44.92 in the 300-meter hurdles during her freshman year at the IHSAA regional.

Katie went on to be ranked as the number one high school vaulter in the nation both indoors and outdoors in 2006. During that same year, she became only the second high school athlete to vault 14-0 indoors in U.S. history at the National Pole Vault Summit in Reno, Nevada. She was the 2006 Nike Indoor and Outdoor High School champion, was the2006 DyeStat Female Athlete of the Year in the pole vault and was the 2006 and 2007 Gatorade Track and Field Athlete of the Year.

Stephen Smith

Southport

A late bus changed the course of Stephen Smith’s athletic career, and later his life.

The Southport High School high jumper went on to become a three-time NCAA runner-up, and he represented the United States at the World Indoor Championships besides winning a silver medal at the Pan American Games.

Smith was an All-Marion County selection in football and baseball. In late spring of his junior year, while playing intramural basketball, Southport track coach Scott Fangman asked him to try the high jump. Because the bus was 20 minutes late, the coach set up the high jump pit that night, and Smith made the bar at 6 feet, 2 inches.

He became a track and field athlete.

He went out for the team the following week, jumped 6-8 to finish second in the sectional but placed fifth in the regional and did not advance to state. In his senior year of 1989, he finished second in the state meet at 6-10. He jumped 7 feet to win the Midwest Meet of Champions and 6-11 to place fourth in the International Prep Invitational.

Smith earned a track scholarship to Indiana State and competed for the Sycamores from 1991-94. He became a four-time All-American and two-time Missouri Valley Conference champion.

He was second in the NCAA outdoors in 1994, and indoors in 1991 and 1992. He was fifth in 1993. He set school records of 7-4 ½ indoors and 7-7 outdoors, and in 1994 won the Hillman Outstanding Senior Athlete Award. Smith was the field MVP of the 1994 MVC outdoor meet and a member of the MVC all-centennial team.

He graduated with a sociology degree and continued to compete nationally and internationally, including Olympic Trials in 1992, 1996 and 2000. In 1994, he was second in the outdoor USA Championships and USA-Great Britain dual meet. He was silver medalist in the 1995 Pan American Games at Mar del Plata, Argentina. He won the high jump at the 1999 Millrose Games in New York, and was second at the 1995 and 1999 USA Indoor Championships. He was seventh in the 1995 World Indoor Championships at Barcelona, Spain.

Smith belongs to what could be considered the first family of Indiana track. He is the uncle of Lawrence North graduate Ashley Spencer, a state champion who won a bronze medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 2016 Rio Olympics. He is a Warren Central assistant coach to wife Le’gretta Smith, who led the Warriors to back-to-back girls state titles in 2016 and 2017. Smith is the personal coach of long jumper Prommyse Hoosier, who won state and Junior Olympics titles in 2018 and was third in the under-20 USA Junior Championships.

Smith is an academic adviser at the University of Indianapolis.

Robert Smitson

Brebeuf Jesuit

Robert Smitson was a 2001 graduate of Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis. While a student at Brebeuf, Robert won the 2001 Indiana State Championship in the 3200-meter run. He then finished second in the Adidas National Championship two-mile run with a time of 8:58.0, becoming the first Hoosier in 25 years (since Rudy Chapa) to break the nine-minute barrier.

Robert was a varsity letter winner in cross country and track and field each of his four years of high school and elected captain of the cross country team his sophomore, junior and senior years and captain of the track and field team his junior and senior years.

At Brebeuf Jesuit, Robert qualified for the IHSAA State Finals his sophomore, junior and senior years in both cross country and track and field, winning medals in the 3200-meter, 1600-meter 4x400 relay and cross country. Upon graduation, Robert was the Brebeuf Jesuit school record holder in the 1600-meter run, 3200-meter run, 3200-meter relay and 5000 meters cross country. He also held the Marion County meet record in the 1600-meters and the North Central Sectional record in the 3200-meter run.

In additional to his success at the state and local level, Robert excelled at the national level. In 2001, he was named a Track and Field News All-American in the two-mile. He was named an Adidas High School All-American in outdoor track and field after finishing second in the National Championship two-mile run and sixth in the mile run. Robert was named Nike Indoor All-American in the two-mile and he was runner-up in the Golden West mile.

Robert was the 2001 Atlantic Coast Conference Freshman of the Year at Duke University. After transferring to Stanford University, Robert was second team All-Pac-10 in 2002 and helped lead his cross country team to an NCAA Championship in 2002 and 2003.

Robert graduated from Stanford University with a major in human biology in 2005 and graduated from Emory University School of Medicine in 2010. He currently practices medicine in Honolulu, Hawaii, and lives with his wife Kaily, and two daughters, Isla and Brynn.

Greg Gibson

Terre Haute

Greg Gibson was born into a family of entrepreneurs. Grandfather LaVern Gibson owned a farm east of Terre Haute with a small shaft coal mine and began mining coal and delivering to residents in and around Terre Haute. It later became a strip coal mine operation. After the coal ran out, he looked for another use and discovered that the residents he had served with coal needed an area to dispose of their trash and that became the family’s base business. He had a “inspiring vision” that was simply born by watching his grandson Greg run cross country. He then endowed 240 acres of property to become the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course.

Father Max Gibson, an Indiana State University graduate, expanded the trash hauling business into trucking local coal to large users in Indianapolis and elsewhere.

Greg attended Terre Haute North High School and became interested in running. He became very good under the direction of Coach Bill Welch. After graduating from high school, Greg followed his coach and took his athletic and academic talents to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology where his interest in running continued to grow. After graduation, Greg continued the family entrepreneurial trait and took the trash business to a new high. Filling the family’s original landfill on the east side of Terre Haute, he began to expand into many businesses. The landfill was turned over the Department of Natural Resources for the required 10 years and then he began looking for a purpose for the landfill. His interest in running and years at Rose-Hulman gave him the idea to develop it into a nationally recognized cross country course. He approached Rose-Hulman to become a partner. However, legal and safety issues held the university back from entering into a joint agreement. Greg used his inherited trait of finding new use for anything and got a group of Rose-Hulman students to survey a running course on the property. From that humble beginning the LaVern Gibson property became one of the greatest cross country courses in the world.

Greg’s plans for the LaVern Gibson Cross Country complex grows each year and its final concept is still in his mind, as he looks to take his vision for the course even farther.

David Patterson

Terre Haute

The physical site of what would become the LaVern Gibson Cross Country course has been a part of his life for more than the 21 years of cross country races. As a young man his father owned a construction business, so he frequently discarded unwanted building materials when the site was still a landfill. After graduating from Indiana State University, he then went to work for the Gibson family who owned the waste hauling and landfill operation. He frequently walked the property with the representatives to gather water samples from the monitoring wells. The landfill was closed in 1987 and had to remain untouched for ten years to ensure the site could be considered for another use. This is when the Gibson family and two legendary coaches, Bill Welch and John McNichols, conspired to create this wonderful cross country course!

Dave’s role began as simply a helper to the visionaries. The first big race took place in the fall of 1997, the NCAA Division I Great Lakes Regional. The site has now hosted 13 NCAA Division I National Championships, one NCAA Division III National Championship and many other elite collegiate races. It hosted the 13^th IHSAA State High School Championship in October and our 10^th Nike Cross Country Regional (a high school meet with boys and girls from 5 states).

He currently oversees all physical and financial operations of the course. Working with paid staff, vendors and volunteers whose common goal is to provide a world class, spectator friendly cross country course built for the sole purpose of providing a better venue than has ever been created in the United States, he is very proud and humbled to serve the distance runners who pass through the gates.

He looks forward to hosting many future races at the legendary LaVern Gibson Championship Course

Ed Stuffle

North Montgomery

Ed, a Washington High School Hatchet graduating in 1967, coached track and field and cross country and was assistant athletic director for 41 years at North Montgomery High School, where he was “An Original Chargin’ Charger.” His teams were won 13 conference championships and three sectionals, partly due to the results from the cross country programs he developed at Darlington, Coal Creek Central and Waynetown Junior High Schools.

He was Awarded “Official of the Year” by USATF Indiana and the IATCCC for his officiating at all levels (grassroots to elite) and many hundreds of meets across Indiana and the United States. Ed served as starter of the Indiana Special Olympics Games track and field competition since 1995. Ed has officiated in many positions for the NCAA, NAIA and IHSAA (running referee, field referee, combined events referee, umpire, recall starter, finish line coordinator and head starter). He has also officiated several sectionals, regionals and semistates, plus 20 national championships and three USA Track & Field Olympic Trials.

Ed was a leader in organizing the Cherry Grove Track Club (primarily a long distance running club of Cherry Grove, Indiana) and he was the initial head coach of the New Horizons Track Club of the Crawfordsville/West Central Indiana community, with many athletes earning births at regional and national Junior Olympic Championships.

Ed served on three Indiana Midwest Meet of Champions coaching staffs, as chairman of the Girls and Boys Track and Field Academic All-State Selection Committee for many years and received the Hall of Fame Museum Platinum Award for his volunteer efforts. He currently holds the positions of vice president of the museum board of directors and editor of their newsletter, “Exchange Zone.”

4 x Mile Relay

Terre Haute North

Terre Haute North High School ran four distance runners from their 1972 IHSAA State Cross Country Championship team in a 4x1 mile relay at a Bloomington High School Early Bird Meet at the Indiana University Fieldhouse in the winter of 1973 to a national record 17:41.2. Joe Ofsansky led off in 4:22.9. John Reedy followed with a 4:34.0 and this placed the Patriots four seconds behind the national record. Jim Rice ran third in 4:29.3, keeping the team five seconds behind the record and in striking distance. Jeff Claretto anchored in a blazing 4:15.0 to easily break the record held by Proviso West High School of Hillsdale, Illinois. It is of interest that Coach Bill Welch did not include on that relay team the school’s two-mile record holder John Roscoe, seventh place state finisher and the only senior on the 1972 state championship cross country team that defeated the two-time defending IHSAA state champions Southport High School. Instead, he chose to run four underclassmen: Ofsansky (grade 11) ran 32^ndin the State Cross Country Finals, Reedy (10) 37^th, Rice (11) 46^th and Claretto (11) 9^th. What an accomplishment! All four would improve those places in the 1973 IHSAA State Cross Country Finals to finish third behind Elkhart Central and Portage.

Coach Welch felt that they were capable of running much faster, perhaps 10 seconds faster indoors and much faster outdoors. Coach Welch tried to get others to race them during the season, but to no avail. In 1974, Terre Haute North broke its own national indoor record in 17:29.6. This mark would stand for 30 years until being broken by Shenendehowa High School of Clifton Park, New York, in 2004.

Pauline Siebenthal

Bloomington

Pauline Siebenthal was born in Bloomington in 1895, after the family had moved there from Vevay, Indiana, so all of the nine children could receive an education.

As the only girl, Pauline grew up do things in which boys were interested. She was very good at softball and tennis, but could she could be called the pioneer of Indiana girls’ sports. It was very rare for girls to participate in track activities during the early 1900s. Women’s sports history dates to 1895, when the Vassar College Athletic Association ignored the constraints placed on women’s sports participation. In 1900, the fence vault record (which would become the pole vault) was reported to be 4-10½ by D. E. Merrill of Vassar. By 1922, track and field for women was becoming fashionable in eastern schools. In Indiana, the Earlham College yearbook of that era displays pictures of girls practicing track events, but no result of competition. In fact, women were not permitted to participate in Olympic competition until the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. Pauline’s participation came in 1915 when she was receiving instructions from Coach Childs of Indiana University’s track team. During a session she vaulted 6-1, higher that Ruth Spencer’s record of 5-8 and it was quickly reported in the news media from coast to coast and border to border. It was reported that she also broke the world’s record in the shot put. So, one could equate Pioneer Pauline’s accomplishments with the increased interest in the sport of track and field in Indiana.

She also traveled to New York to participate in an official meet with Vassar College, although results of the meet were not reported.

After graduating from Indiana University, she became director of Garfield Park, the largest recreational park in Indianapolis at the time. Pauline met young law student George L. Bridenhager and, while helping him study, became interested and eventually they married. Both received their law degrees. They moved to Liberty, Indiana, were George became the county judge. Pauline never practiced law, but became involved in local concerns and raising a son, Charles Andrew.

Pauline was truly a pioneer in the sport of track and field and recreational activities.

James Hatfield

Washington High School

Jim or “Jimmie” as he was known through his competing years was born in Washington, Indiana, in 1908.

His high school achievements were numerous, winning the 1926 Indiana/Kentucky AAU meet, equaling the state high school high hurdle mark at the South Central meet in Bloomington, placing second in the 1927 IHSAA State Finals to Noblesville’s Joe Scully’s record in the 120-yard high hurdles and again equaling the former state record, winning the 60-yard high hurdles at the National Indoor Relays in Louisville, Kentucky. He captained the Washington team in 1927, as well.

Taking his talents to Indiana University, Jim’s career blossomed under the masterful coaching of E. C. “Billy” Hayes. His major achievements started in 1930 by winning the high hurdles in the Indiana State Collegiate Meet, winning the Penn Relays, the Cadillac Athletic Club Open meet and he was a member of the winning 480-yard hurdle relay at the British American meet in Chicago in record time. He climaxed the season by being named to the AAU All American Track Team. The 1931 season continued with the same results: again winning the Indiana State Collegiate Meet, the Middle Western Amateur Meet sponsored by the Chicago Herald Examiner, lowering the Indiana Fieldhouse 70-yard high hurdle record and was again chosen captain of the team. He was awarded the Belfour Medal as the most valuable member of the IU track team and the Western Conference (now Big Ten) Medal for outstanding ability in athletics and scholarship.

In the summer of 1931 after graduating, Jim toured Europe and South Africa with the AAU team, setting a new South Africa record in the high hurdles and a high hurdle world record on a grass track. In 1932, he set a world record in the 50-yard high hurdles at the Milrose Games and again at the AAU Cincinnati Public Recreational Meet. Jim continued his record setting efforts at the Central AAU meet with a record in the 70-yard high hurdles. He qualified for the 1932 Olympic Trials and was named an alternate on the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Team.

In 1934, Jim married Ruth Gill, also from Washington, Indiana. Together they enjoyed raising three children: Sarah, Hayes and James. He was kind, nurturing and patient with all whom he came into contact. While at Indiana University, James earned a Ph.D. in electro-chemistry and had a very successful career in the storage battery industry.

He passed away in September of 1993.

George Carroll Spradling

Frankfort

George Carroll Spradling grew up in Frankfort, Indiana, inspired to become one of the greatest athletes of the time. As was the norm of school boys then, he was very interested in basketball and football. Track would be a stepping stone in reaching his goal of an excellent, rugged athlete. However, track itself soon grew in interest as George began to excel.

He would develop into one of the finest Indiana high school three-sport athletes, lettering and starting in all three of those sports in his sophomore, junior and senior years. His track endeavors produced great efforts each year, winning IHSAA sectional titles and qualifying for the IHSAA State Finals in 1920, 1921 and 1922. He would improve his qualifying marks each year, winning the 1921 and 1922 state 880-yard championships. In those years, the IHSAA State Finals 880-yard run was divided into two sections and George ran the fastest time both years. His 1922 winning time of 2:04.0 broke the record of 2:05.2 set in 1917 by Frankfort’s Halfield Brown.

George took his talents in all three sports to Purdue University and continued to star in each sport. After setting out his freshman season according to Western Conference rules, he would in 1924 lead the conference basketball statistics in scoring, repeating in 1926 and runner-up in 1925. He was All-Big Ten, All-Midwestern and All-Western in basketball.

In the 1924 track season, George would enter the Big Ten Championships as a leader in the 880-yard run championships and was one of the best in the nation.

George was reported to be the nation’s “best all-round athlete” at the collegiate level.

After graduating from Purdue University, George, like most multi-sport athletes in the early years, chose to continue his basketball career in the Industrial League with the Firestone Tire and Rubber team. Later, he joined the professional Saginaw team and then on to Detroit.

He retired from sports and started an auto parts company in Indianapolis and later joined the national company NAPA.