Remembering Bill Roe (part 1)...
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| Bill Roe speaking at the technical meeting at the Pan American Cross Country Cup in Victoria, BC. He would be found dead in his hotel room the next day (photo by Carlos Zayas/NACAC) |
Bill, a resident of Bellingham, and an assistant track & cross country coach at Western Washington University, was found dead in his hotel room Saturday February 29th in Victoria, BC. He was attending the Pan American Cross Country Cup as a technical delegate, and assisting the local organizing committee in its efforts to help Victoria bring the 2023 or 2025 World Athletics Cross Country Championships to southwest Canada.
All the social media posts, and all the written thoughts and words from those who knew him would not do it justice. I'd be lying if I told all of you that what I'm about to write will do justice...Bill's legacy in the sport and the thousands (yes, you read that right) of people he touched is way too big to do it justice.
Throughout my life in the sport, Bill was one of the constants, from my days competing as a high schooler at Franklin HS, to my time as a walk-on cross country runner and track team manager at the University of Washington, then to my time managing Club Ballard, then getting involved with The Athletics Congress/USA Track & Field at the local and national levels, to going to various world cross country championship meets as the USATF on-site press officer, and as the track and field announcer at the University of Washington.
THE HIGH SCHOOL YEARS...
As a kid growing up in South Seattle, I made it a point to take the number 7 Metro bus downtown and either transfer to a bus to go to Husky Stadium, or West Seattle Stadium to run the Wednesday night all-comers meets during the summer.
I do have a story of a run-in I had with Bill during my junior year when I got caught sneaking into Edmundson Pavilion to run a workout on the UW indoor track along with a Franklin HS teammate.
We were walking out of Hec Ed to walk to the bus stop when he walked in with one of his Club Northwest runners & confronted us about running in the Pavilion a few weeks before the annual State High School Invitational indoor meet. There was a clause in the waiver for the State High School Invitational that Club Northwest organized that said that no high school athletes were allowed to work out on the track at Hec Ed. When he saw us exiting the arena, he threatened to kick us out of the meet.
He didn't.
THE UW...
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| Paul Merca at the 1978 AAU Cross Country Championships which was marred by the field being misdirected. Meet director Bill Roe made the corrections on the fly by switching the order of the loops. |
Any visit to the Track House would inevitably involve folding, stapling, and bundling copies of the Club Northwest newsletter, "The Nor'Wester", which eventually evolved into Northwest Runner magazine.
Bill organized a triangular meet involving teams from British Columbia, New Zealand and Washington at Husky Stadium a few weeks before the 1978 Commonwealth Games.
The post meet party was held at the Track House, and that's where I met New Zealand's 1972 Olympic 1500 meter bronze medalist Rod Dixon having a beer in the basement of the Track House.
Bill made a lot of friends from New Zealand because of that meet, and that became the inspiration for his annual trip to that country in late December/early January in the middle of summer.
No story about Bill during the UW years would be complete without recalling the 1978 AAU Cross Country Championships at the West Seattle Golf Course.
In the days before Thanksgiving, the site was covered with snow after he and his crew pre-marked the course. With the meet the Saturday after Thanksgiving, he and his volunteers had to somehow get the snow off the course, which they did.
On race day, all seemed to go well, when a volunteer mistakenly directed all but a handful to the start of a loop that was supposed to be run later. Once the mistake was realized, Bill ON THE FLY changed the sequence of the loops so that everyone ran the advertised 10k distance.
I ran in the national championship race that day, and finished close to DFL. I had no idea that there was a problem with the race course until I went to the Nike post-race party at the Sea-Tac Holiday Inn and had a couple of beers (even though I wasn't 21).
THE CLUB BALLARD YEARS...
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| Paul Merca running at a CNW All-Comers meet in 1989 |
Shortly after the finish of the race, Bill comes up to me asking what the hell Club Ballard is, and I explained to him that it was a group of guys who wanted to run for a team and train together over the summer.
He strongly suggested that if these guys wanted to run together, that we register as a club team with The Athletics Congress.
We didn't register as a team until November, before the Junior Olympic cross country meet, where the club won the 17-18 title over some established clubs.
This was also the start of my involvement with TAC/USA Track & Field at the association and eventually the national levels, because every club was supposed to have a representative at the monthly association meetings.
From my beginnings as the club delegate, I eventually became the Open Athletics chairman for the Pacific Northwest Association, and represented the association as a voting delegate at the USA Track & Field national convention. I also became a race director of the PNW Cross Country Championships, in conjunction with Club Ballard's Turkey Trot.
During that time period, there were signs of a growing rivalry between Club Northwest and my club, because the post-collegiate elite athletes that they would normally get were instead gravitating towards Club Ballard, particularly in the sprints and jumps, while their focus was on the distances, the vault and the throws, in that order.
This was also the time that the better elite athletes were signed to shoe company teams, eschewing the club teams that were prevalent throughout the country up until the mid-to-late 1980s.
While there was talk from Club Northwest about merging the two clubs, I wouldn't do it, just for the simple fact that we wanted to keep our own identity, even though I knew that they had more financial resources.
I'll post Part B in the next day or so...
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