Bill Hargiss Still In There Pitchin'
by Jay Simon (Kansas Sports Editor)

     Bill Hargiss is a pretty fair sized man. He stands about 6 feet 4 inches tall and probably weighs 225 pounds. However, the Jayhawker track coach's displacement doesn't give you an accurate picture of how big he is.
     The thing that makes Bill big can't be measured with scales and tape.  Hargiss probably qualifies for the title "most unlucky man in America" after all that has happened to his cinder team, yet he continues to go after all that has happened to his face and says, "We'll have a track team; anyway, before the season is over."
     Mt. Oread has never given track a lot of house. It warms up to the Relays, and there have been a few individual stars come along, notably Jim Bausch and Glenn Cunningham, but in the main Kansas track has been kicked around like a cross-eyed step child.
     In the face of this Hargiss went to work to build up the sport and last year would have won the Big Six outdoor meet, if it hadn't been for injuries to several of his key men.
     It looked like Bill might have got all the jinxes worked out of his system and be ready to go to town this year, but last spring's crop multiplied instead of dying out.
     The plague began in the summer when Dick Overfield decided to pull stakes and enroll at Compton Junior College, a farm school for Southern California. Overfield was nearing world record time in the sprints and would have mopped up on everything in the loop.
     The next blow fell at the end of the fall semester when 22 men on whom Bill was counting were declared ineligible. All the high jumpers and shot putters were chopped down when the academic axe fell. Imagine having six boys in school who can average 6 feet 2 inches in the high jump and not a one of them eligible. With his first four weight men out of competition, Bill hasn't got a shot putter who can even come close to the 40 foot mark.
     Even this might not have been so bad, had not Bob Stoland, the team's co-captain and scoring star been barred. Stoland was the Big Six champion in both the high jump and broad jump last year and a fine student besides, but he enrolled in one hour too few the two semesters preceding competition and there will be no track for Bob this year.
     At Lincoln Ray Harris, fine distance runner and other co-captain, stepped on the track curbing and injured his ankle. He won't regain his usual form for another week or two.
     Coming back from the meet with the Huskers, one of the cars turned over on the icy pavement and five of the athletes were scratched and shaken up.
      All this might have caused an ordinary man to throw up his hands and quit, but not Bill Hargis. He's scouring the Hill for more talent and working all the harder.
     "I believe there are plenty of good athletes in these houses that could make points for us, if they would just come out," the track mentor said yesterday.
     He went on to say that he will be more than glad to give any man a suit who comes down to the stadium and asks for it. "We have plenty of them," he said, "just waiting for runners, and jumpers, and throwers, to come and get in them."
     Later on Bill plans to have a meet between his regular team, and the rest of the men in school who are not eligible. In this class will be freshmen and upper classmen who have failed to make their grades.